INT119International/Media/Politics/US ElectionSimple headlines capture Obama's momentous victoryBy Arun KumarWashington, Nov 5 IANS American newspaper headlines captured the momentous nature of Barack Obama's election with a few pithy words that said it all.A New York Times banner headline said simply "OBAMA". The Washington Times proclaimed "President Obama", the Washington Post declared "Obama Makes History" and USA Today said: "America makes history; Obama wins".Referring to the new president-elect as "Barack Hussein Obama", the Times credited him on its front page with "sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics" adding that it "amounted to a national catharsis".Hailing Obama's election, the Washington Post said: "It is momentous for the generational change it heralds, the geographic realignment it reflects and the racial progress it both acknowledges and promises."Most of all, Mr. Obama's victory is momentous for the opportunity it presents to put the country on a new and better path, imbued, as he said last night, with a new spirit of patriotism, service and responsibility," it said.The Los Angeles Times also referred to Obama breaking "the ultimate racial barrier" in "a nation that was founded by slave owners and seared by civil war and generations of racial strife".Obama, the daily cautioned, "faces peril if he hews too far left or pursues cautious mediation at the expense of his agenda. ... Too much of the ambitious liberal, and he rekindles partisan squabbles he was supposed to transcend."Too much the cautious mediator who reaches across the aisle to compromise with Republicans, and he risks losing the energy and idealism that attracted millions to his candidacy," it added.Congratulating Obama, the Wall Street Journal noted: "A man of mixed race has now reached the pinnacle of US power only two generations since the end of Jim Crow."This is a tribute to American opportunity, and it is something that has never happened in another Western democracy - notwithstanding European condescension about 'racist' America," it added.--Indo-Asian News Serviceak/am352 Words*05112151