There is an aura that people assume after accomplishing a heroic or life-changing feat. You might see it in the veteran who has been in combat, the mother who has given birth for the first time, the marathon runner who has completed the race. And you saw it Tuesday among emerging Sen. Barack Obama voters.

It’s a burst of adrenaline, a declaration of personal power and purpose. As someone put it, “Everything was joyful and electric.” And that was even before the voting outcome was known.

I’ve been watching American elections for years, but I’ve never seen anything like this.

Obama brought a skeptical, divided nation together, across class, race and gender, to dream of what not long ago was unimaginable. He’s brought people in unprecedented numbers into the voting booth – such as 26-year-old Kenyatta Henderson and 35-year-old Darian Evans.

I met them, she a stay-at-home mom and he a mailing-facility employee, as they emerged from a mid-city library after voting for the first time. “I’ve complained about the president for the last eight years, but I really didn’t have the right to because I didn’t vote,” said Evans, who wore his long braids in a ponytail.

He was lazy, he admitted, but “I felt it didn’t matter who the president was. It never affected me.”

This time it does. It’s not just that the two are fed up with war, the economy and a White House that Evans says “is full of lies and deceit.” Obama excites them. And it’s not just because, like them, he is black, though as Henderson said, “I love it! It’s about time.”

Obama inspired Lynne Vestal, a white therapist from the upscale suburb of Clive, Iowa, to slip out of bed early and be the first to vote at her precinct. “There’s just this excitement in the air, and I feel like a part of it,” she exclaimed.

I heard variations of that all morning Tuesday, from people across town and across the socioeconomic spectrum. I heard it from 38-year-old Perry Xu, who became a U.S. citizen in August and had just cast, for Obama, what he called his first “real” vote anywhere. I heard it from Kari Jacobson, an IT manager, who said, “Our country has never seemed to be more divisive, and he seems to have the ability to bring cohesion.”

And I heard it from 18-year-old Chanel Adair, a Des Moines (Iowa) Area Community College student, who had accompanied her mother, Cretia Wells, to the library to cast her first vote. She hadn’t really cared about voting, she said. Then she went to hear Obama speak. “It was a blaaast!” she exclaimed. “He did a wonderful job. He had me in tears.”

It’s fitting that when many are losing faith in the government, a man of mixed racial parentage with roots in another country reminds us what we’re about as a nation. Those who have been on the margins or elsewhere cherish America’s promise of equality and justice, while many of us take it for granted.

It’s been said of minorities and women that they have to work twice as hard to get half as far. Obama has certainly done that, not only in getting a first-rate education but by carrying himself through this long and grueling election process with grace and character.

Certainly, his victory was made easier by a tanking economy, an ongoing war and an unpopular president. But he has unique appeal as a leader who’s close to the people.

In a meeting with Des Moines Register writers and editors, he noted how his wife, Michelle, didn’t see him running again if he lost because they wouldn’t be the same people next time. They’re just four years out of credit-card debt and she still shops at Target, he said. How refreshing.

We stand at the brink of a new day in America, one in which hard work and idealism can trump power and cynicism. One in which a child of any race really can aspire to anything.