The world changed on Tuesday night, when Sen. Barack Obama became the 44th president-elect of the United States of America. And although it’s far too early to tell if Obama is going to be able to live up to the expectations that have been set, it seems fair to say that his election was one of the best things that could have happened to this nation.

As everyone knows, America is a country with a clearly racist past. In a land still dominated by the white elite, Obama’s election caps a seemingly endless struggle against the racial split that has torn the country apart in the past. A battle that started with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. may very well have neared a conclusion on Tuesday night.

But the election is not only great for the black community. It’s also great for the entire American population, a group that has been consistently losing faith in the American political system, according to polls.

We are now five years into the war in Iraq and just 39 percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll feel that the country did the right thing by invading Iraq. Only one-fifth approve of the job the current president is doing and fewer than that – a mere 11 percent – said they feel things in America are “going in the right direction.” Rarely has the population of this country been so utterly displeased with the current state of the nation.

After eight years of a Bush administration that greatly alienated much of the world, the international community was paying attention to Tuesday’s vote. According to an Associated Press article, Europeans were comparing Obama’s victory to the fall of the Berlin Wall as a turning point for the entire world. To celebrate, a national holiday was even declared in Kenya, where Obama has relatives.

Given a chance to regain a long-lost pride in this country, the American people stood up and made their voices heard – in record numbers. Another Associated Press article on Wednesday predicted that once the numbers are finalized, voter turnout could be in excess of 64 percent. This would be the highest national turnout in a century.

The election of Obama is important not simply because he was selected, but because it reaffirmed that the people are in control of this nation. And it was one large step toward repairing the world’s view of America.

As Sen. John McCain, Obama’s challenger, said in his Tuesday night concession speech, “The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.”