Paying Homage to the man who made it all possible

Expectations will be enormously, and at times unreasonably, high and he must deliver. He is facing not just a few but several ominous situations both at home and abroad that will require a leadership with clear vision and strong character to overcome and to govern effectively.

He needs to restore confidence, build coalitions not just with the like-minded but also with the acrimonious, to steer Washington out of troubled waters and once again become the "shining city upon a hill" that it has aspired to be. Obama campaigned on the notion of "change we can believe in". It remains to be seen if he can keep that promise.

However, one man's shadow loomed large on the day of Obama's victory. He was an unsung hero, who at the end of his political career, suffered from the "no good deed goes unpunished" curse, and went on his self-destructive downward spiral.

Still, without him, his courage, conviction, and political will, this latest Obama chapter would have been very unlikely. The man who made it possible was Lyndon B Johnson, the 36th president of the United States and the last greatest liberal in American history.

Known as one of the shrewdest and most powerful Southern politicians in the US Congress before he was tapped by president John F Kennedy to become his vice president, Johnson's presidency began in tragedy with the assassination of the popular president - Kennedy.

Once he entered the White House (1963 to 1969), Johnson broke with his Southern tradition of racism and segregation, the two most vicious contentions of the American society since the beginning of the nation.

He did not particularly like Dr Martin Luther King - the charismatic leader of the civil-rights movement at the time - but was willing to set aside his personal feelings and work with the latter in pushing civil-rights legislation through congress.

In 1964, Johnson managed to overcome the Southern resistance and was successful in getting the bill passed. It outlawed most forms of segregation.

In 1965, Johnson managed to coerce Congress to pass the second civil-rights bill, namely the Voting Right Act. The law barred discrimination in voting, thus allowing millions of blacks to vote for the first time.

In 1967, Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall - a civil-rights attorney - to be the first African-American Associate Justice to the Supreme Court. No president before him was willing or able to achieve as much for civil rights in the US as Johnson did.

In his remarks to the joint session of US Congress when passing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson said he was speaking "for the dignity of man and destiny of democracy".

He said: "To deny a man his hopes because of his colour or race, his religion or the place of his birth - is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and dishonour the dead who gave their lives for American freedom." There were men and women in America, he said, who were kept from voting simply because "they are Negroes" and that this injustice had denied them the full blessings of American life.

"Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice," Johnson told the session. With the passage of the two civil-rights bills, Johnson completed a task that could not be achieved even with the 13 th and 15 th amendments of the US constitution.

It is not only that he pushed with all his might to pass the civil-rights legislation, Johnson also used the power of his office to make racism shameful.

After the murder of Viola Liuzzo, a white civil-rights leader, an angry Johnson made a televised appearance to condemn the four Ku Klux Klansmen implicated in her death, saying they represented a "hooded society of bigots", and warned them to "return to a decent society before it's too late". Johnson's act may have been deemed illegal by today's standards because the four had not been convicted at the time of his remarks, but he was unfazed - it was his conviction.

Unfortunately, the toll this had on Johnson and on the Democratic Party's standing was heavy.

Legend has it that when Johnson put down the pen after signing the Civil Rights Act, he - in anticipation of a backlash from Southern whites - told an aide: "We have lost the South for a generation."

Maybe that's why, with the exception of Bill Clinton's election, the southern states have long been the red or Republican states, as they were even this year.

Throughout his tenure, Johnson was never accepted by the Northeastern liberals of the Kennedy tradition.

To them he was a "hick and a crook", and Johnson had the rhetoric to match the first description. But he always got things done without holding out his finger to see which way the political wind blows like most politicians these days do.

Yesterday, not many eyes were left dry when the media declared Obama's victory. Even the staunchest Republican conservative like Bill Bennett was visibly was overcome by emotion.

"This is a great country," he said without any trace of irony, "and I hope he's a great president."

There is much talk about America as a post-racial society, that it is now a changed country where everybody has a chance to fulfil their dream.

If it has changed, it owes it to the unheralded winner of this election - Lyndon Baines Johnson.

His campaign lasted longer than 21 months - it has taken a generation.