Here’s a bit of a shaggy dog story, offered with a light coating of historical license:

I never thought I’d give conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer pride of place in a post election day blog, but if an African-American with an African father can win the presidency by double his opponent’s electoral vote count, anything goes.

The more historically literate among you (including Ivers, who was an assistant to Thomas Edison at the time) may remember that in 1902 Teddy Roosevelt, John McCain’s hero, nominated Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. to the Supreme Court. The press of the era (and remember this was not a time when any idiot could call themselves a journalist; see “Bill O’Reilly” if you’re not sure what I mean) uniformly praised the pick.

Roosevelt had chosen the most brilliant jurist in America. It wasn’t Holmes’ ideology that commended him as a Supreme. It was the marvel of his intellect and his comprehensive knowledge of the law of the land.

Bully for Teddy!

Lap dissolve: it’s thirty years later, election season 1932. The country is in full blown Great Depression mode (as opposed to “Greatest Depression,” which is what we are presently drowning in).

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the one term Governor of New York, a fellow whose polio affliction made it impossible for him to stand up unaided, is in the thick of a tough fight with Herbert (”the fundamentals of our economy are strong”) Hoover. The Grand Old Party is hammering Roosevelt for his “inexperience.” According to them, the gentleman farmer from Duchess County isn’t ready to lead.

Justice Holmes is 91 years old at the time, about to retire from the Court. He will die before year’s end. He doesn’t know Roosevelt very well. He recalls that Franklin married Teddy’s cousin Eleanor and served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration. Thin gruel for someone asking the country to vote him in as Commander-in-Chief.

Holmes decides to extend a friendly invitation to FDR to dine at his home.

FDR, famous even then as a mixologist, offers to prepare the drinks at cocktail hour. Holmes accepts. For the next four hours, Roosevelt finds himself debating, discussing, learning about and sometimes laughing over the history of the nation with a man with more brainpower than the current crop of Supreme Court justices combined.

The martinis, wine, and after dinner brandy (regulated slightly by a couple of Porterhouse steaks cooked just so) help transform what FDR was dreading as a “tryout,” or worse, an inquisition, into a delightful evening. That morning at 1:30 am, the two end up on Holmes’ Georgetown doorstep as members of a new mutual admiration society.

Justice Holmes was no pushover, though.

He was charmed by Roosevelt, but was overheard the next day at the Harvard Club of Washington, D.C. telling an acquaintance that he considered FDR possessed of a “a second class intellect and a first class temperament.” A consensus builder with no book sense? A liberal lightweight? Of course Roosevelt and history have proven Holmes wrong a hundred times over. In the run up to the momentous ‘32 election, though, some Americans didn’t argue the Justice’s point.

From Roosevelt and Holmes I now return, God forbid, to whence this essay began, to The Post’s Charles Krauthammer. Our punch line comes from him. Krauthammer one-upped Holmes in a column about now President-elect Obama (sounds right already, doesn’t it?) in early October. He called Obama “a first class intellect with a first class temperament.”

Holmes would have been proud. Last night we elected as our 44th President a politician who moonlit at the University of Chicago as a constitutional law professor.

So here’s a bet that the inexperienced junior senator from Illinois gives as good as we got from that inexperienced one term Governor from New York back in the day.

Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration in March of 1933 was the start of a transformational era in American history.

The good news is we’re poised for another one right now.

John Schreiber is the Executive Vice President, Social Action & Advocacy at Participant Media