EDITORIAL:

Only four U.S. presidents have had names that ended in a vowel.

James Monroe, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Calvin Coolidge.

And now Barack Obama.

That sure is change, all right.

OK, so that’s just a little bit of historical trivia that doesn’t amount to all that much, but there was nothing trivial about what happened Tuesday.

On election night, after the longest and most grueling campaign we’ve ever seen, we saw John McCain, a genuine American hero in one of his finest moments, deliver a gracious and eloquent concession speech.

Then, moments later, the Illinois senator took the stage with his wife and two daughters and inspired a torrent of emotions as he delivered his first speech as president-elect.

Even many conservative Republicans got caught up in the emotion as it dawned on us that the country had just elected its first African American president. Some felt pride while others marveled at his political acumen, but most felt just awe that they had witnessed a major timeline moment in this country’s progress.

How amazing was Obama’s journey to the White House? Consider this: As the county continued to tally absentee and provisional ballots Friday, McCain led Obama by just a few points here. Keep in mind Orange County hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential campaign since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

And Obama won Costa Mesa by about six points.

We won’t get a chance to crunch the numbers until next week, when the county can release more information, but some experts say pre-election polls showed Obama was unusually popular with Republicans.

That shouldn’t surprise you too much. President Bush’s approval ratings are about 25%, and the Republican brand has suffered as the party indulged in deficit-spending to an alarming level when it was in the majority. This clearly was a “change” election, and no one embodied that sentiment more than Obama.

Now comes the soul searching for Republicans. The GOP should keep this in mind, though, when it seems bleakest: Just four years ago, when President Bush won another term, the Democrats were in the same fix. The leadership engineered a comeback by recruiting conservative “blue dog” Democrats as the Iraq war grew more unpopular and they took back majorities in the House and Senate. They expanded on those majorities Tuesday.

Now the Democrats are solidly in charge and have no one else to blame if they fail. In just two short years they will have to face voters again. We shall see what happens, but did we just hear that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee planned to visit Iowa this month?

The campaigning never seems to end, does it?