Those of us with some gray in our hair stood around television sets Tuesday night and, some with tears, said the same thing: We never thought we would live to see this day in our lifetime.

By the time Oregon threw its seven electoral votes into the mix, it was clear that the United States not only had elected its first African-American president, but the prevailing power had changed hands.

We expect much for this show of trust.

For one thing, we expect the Republicans - and the Independents and the Green Party candidates and everybody else - to stay at the table and participate in addressing the serious business ahead.

The man who was defeated Tuesday night gave us hope that the dawn of Barack Obama's administration might also be the start of a long-overdue and desperately needed return of unity to the United States of America.

We hope that his supporters will take John McCain's gracious and inspiring words to heart and help Obama and the other newly elected leaders of this nation, state and region wisely govern. We need them. And we are fortunate to live in a nation and state where we value their involvement.

Our own series of candidate forums demonstrated that we have such an engaged citizenry that is eager to hear how candidates speak to the issues. (To the reader who called from Philomath, asking if we could hold a candidate forum there, we apologize that we didn't organize more forums outside of the Corvallis area. We pledge to do better in the future.)

We will not know until the future whether the phenomenal registration we saw this year among young people translated into actual votes at the polls. Benton County Elections Supervisor Jill Van Buren said we won't know until long after the election the effect of the young voters on the election's outcome. But let's hope that the interest we saw among young people in this election continues and carries over into a continued involvement with this democracy.

The election is finally over. But the real change is yet to come. We've seen a historic level of interest in the campaign. Let's dare to expect that interest will carry over into working together to find solutions we need.