Although today felt like hundreds of years away, it seemed like only yesterday we were half a nation reeling from a shame-inducing punch to the stomach:
Even more so than in 2004, the outside world has a huge stake in the outcome of today’s election. America still wields an inordinate amount of military power, enormous but deteriorating diplomatic influence and an overwhelming impact on the global environment. To say that Earth’s fate hangs in balance today would probably be an understatement.
Putting myself in the shoes of foreign observers, I can’t imagine the frustration that goes along with having zero influence over today’s outcome while remaining in mortal fear of the consequences of a third Bush term. As the authors of "Right Nation" note:
"American power is so overwhelming that people everywhere watch America’s politicians just as closely as they watch their own. And with this familiarity has come a growing sense of powerlessness. People around the world feel that they are citizens of the United States in the sense that they are participants in its culture and politics," they wrote.
But what leads to such exasperation abroad is that U.S. officials are "plainly not accountable to these non-Americans," the authors wrote.
Nonetheless, trepidation abroad is tempered by excitement and faith that Americans will do the right thing (this time). According to Newsweek, the last time foreigners were this excited about an election was Eisenhower. And, as you may have guessed, their excitement isn’t over John McCain.
An American living in South Africa provides this perspective:
The interest in the current campaign is overwhelming. Details, significant and trivial, are reported and consumed.
Every American election is news abroad. As the world’s only remaining superpower, the president that the American people choose affects the lives of people who have never and may never set foot within our country’s borders. Small details that most of us don’t know about impact their quality of life in profound ways.
And Obama has become quite popular there (to say the least):
His image is ubiquitous. I saw my first Obama image painted onto the side of a telephone pole the day after I arrived in Cape Town.
Since then, he has popped up on trashcans, walls and random nooks and crannies. I have seen his portrait both sprayed as graffiti in an alley and rendered in oil paint on the walls of a gallery. His books are bestsellers. Internet pop-ups ask, "Obama’s IQ is (fill in a high number), what is yours?" The University of Cape Town’s speech and debate team recruits "aspiring Obamas."
In Vietnam, where John McCain has become widely popular since the war, many people "support Barack Obama - and it is not just the young adults."
Some people living abroad will directly influence who wins today’s election. In India, an expatriate couple felt compelled to make the 9300 mile, $5000 dollar trip back to America to cast their vote after their absentee ballots didn’t make it. That’s a remarkable display of real Americanism™ for a couple who only became citizens one year ago.
Newspapers around the world are also weighing in. Echoing the sentiments of most Europeans, a paper in Strasbourg France reveals why it supports the Democratic nominee:
That's because he stands for real change, but also because McCain wears the Republican banner that -- perhaps unfairly -- puts him on equal footing with the incumbent president
Throughout the election, McCain characterized Obama as naïve and not-ready for global prime time. The Dutch paper, De Volkskrant, sharply disagrees:
Everything points to the fact that diplomacy plays a far bigger role for him than it does for the incumbent president, and that he would handle it with far more aplomb.
The Middle East also has an immense stake in today’s outcome. In Lebanon, which is on the cusp of civil war at any given movement, one author remarkably sees a path to peace in the region with Obama as its catalyst:
Imagining Obama in the White House frees my imagination. An American with an African background, a global bent of mind, an ecumenical Christian, a man who celebrates diversity of every kind is bound to bring constructive change to America and to the Middle East. Am I dreaming again? By "realists," I will be ridiculed for raising my hopes again.
But I dream for a purpose: to show that the political solution for an Arab-Israeli peace is known. But this solution has been locked away by rigid attitudes, fear of change and a climate of political inaction.
My dream starts with an Obama victory.
The world is watching. Let’s give them headlines tomorrow about how 90 million Americans could be so smart.
cross-posted MYDD