Global euphoria is better than the disrepute of the Bush years, but so far our new president’s appeal is symbolic.
By Theodore Dalrymple
Like it or not, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States has done an immense amount to restore American prestige in the world. Not since the destruction of the Twin Towers has there been dancing in the streets anywhere on the planet to celebrate events in America. It is to be hoped, of course, that it is not the same people http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=58.
In Delhi, Indians kissed Obama’s photo. Parties spilled into the Kenyan streets. In Britain, the newspapers were beside themselves with http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6078. The Daily Mirror, a tabloid with a circulation of 3 million, ran a photo of the president-elect with a single large word to accompany it: BELIEVE. Even politicians who might have been expected to have more affinity for John McCain took pains to rejoice over Obama’s victory.
A group of 8,000 Bedouin living in Galilee http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6019 newspaper Liberation said that the fact that America had a member of a racial minority and a woman among the contenders for the highest offices in the land meant that France could learn something about democracy from America. (It meant openness, which is not quite the same as democracy and may even sometimes be its opposite.)
When he went to Berlin, Obama addressed 200,000 enthusiastic people; it is doubtful that the Republican candidate would have drawn 200. After his election, the German tabloid Bild carried the headline “Messiah Obama,” and though one might have thought that Germans, of all people, would have had enough of political messiahs, the characterization was a compliment.
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/dec/01/00006/