As everyone who wasn't in a coma today knows, Colin Powell put his stamp of approval on Obama. With any luck, that was also a spike through the heart of the McBush campaign. Between Powell speaking up and the recent polls, I'm almost tempted to optimism.

Having been born in 1952, I was just the right impressionable age when the American civil rights movement took off in the early '60s. Almost every night on the six 0'clock news there would be footage of black people being tumbled down some Southern street at the end of a jet of water from a fire hose wielded by some white police officer. Or being beaten with billy clubs. Or shot. Television footage couldn't, of course, show the real horrors. Bombings of black churches with children inside. Burnings, lynchings. Those things turned up in the pages of "Life" magazine, and other news magazines of the day.

Yep, it's gonna be a pretty huge day when Barack Obama gives his inauguration speech. A real big day.

And you know what'll be even bigger? If, at the end of his 8 years in office (I told you I was feeling optimistic), the reviews of his presidency never once mention his skin colour.