George Shantzek is right about one thing – that Iowa voters giving the nod to Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama did so because they wanted change. But Shantzek missed what was most important about Thursday night.

Forget Huckabee. His campaign is going to be irrelevant a month from now and, even if he somehow wins his party’s nomination, there’s no way he could win a general election because his extremely socially conservative (evangelical) views are too far out of step with mainstream America. Clinton can’t win a national election either because she is too socially and fiscally liberal for most Americans – people who also see right through her phony, calculated personality-of-the-week persona.

That brings us back to Obama, a man whose views I mostly disagree with but who made me go to bed Thursday night proud to be an American.

As a progressive-minded but politically independent Southerner (I moved to D.C. from Atlanta six months ago), I dreamed of the day that my country would more closely resemble the nation Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned when he spoke of the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners sitting down together at the table of brotherhood. While America in the past 50 years has made painfully small but consistent strides in opening the full array of her opportunities to people of all backgrounds, I was stunned to see the people of Lily white Iowa put the country on its back for a giant leap.

Though only 2.3 percent of Iowa’s population is black, Iowans turned out in droves to support a man with a father from Kenya. Obama’s win speaks volumes for progress in America.

Yes, Lily white Iowa of all places.

Long before the Thursday caucus, I wanted to believe my fellow Americans wouldn’t deny Obama their vote for less than honorable reasons. I wanted to believe we had reached a point in which, again in King’s words, people would judge Obama not based on the color of his skin but the content of his character. Vote against him because of policy views, fair enough, but not because of his pigmentation.

If Iowans did right by America that night, Obama did them right by delivering one of the best victory speeches I’ve ever heard. He spoke with confidence and candor, and with both humility and the pinch of hubris anyone seeking the nation’s highest office needs. He honored other uphill battles this country has won, from the American Revolution to World War II and the Civil Rights movement. If Democrats across the country go on to make him their nominee, he said he would do his absolute best to prove worthy of their confidence.

His speech was so good I almost forgot I disagree with most of what he and most ultra liberal Democrats believe.

Something else about his speech struck me, too. Like a lot of people in this country, I still wasn’t quite sure what I thought of Obama before the caucus win. He seemed like a genuine, stand-up guy, and I’m all for anyone not named Bush or Clinton making his or her way on to the national political scene. In the back of my mind, though, I wondered: Does this guy have the gravitas to be president of the United States?

Thursday night, for the first time, I thought the man looked “presidential”. He had an aura about him on that podium that said to me, “I may be young. I may not have spent my entire life in politics. But I can do this job. I am up to the task. And I can honor this office.”

I suspected a great many people from Alaska to Alabama found themselves thinking the same thing in that moment.

Regardless of my political differences with Obama and his supporters, I’m glad he won in Iowa – and damn proud to be associated with the people who turned out in his favor.