Travels in the Riel World

What an election night! When was the last time that we saw spontaneous electoral celebrations breaking out in city streets, with horns honking and people dancing, hugging, and high-fiving strangers? Part of the celebration was due to the historic nature of yesterday’s election, but I also think part of it was a national release of pent up emotion. It was a catharsis.

A good many American voters are tired. Yes, tired of the constant sense of crisis of the past several years, from 9-11 to the Iraq war to the financial crisis. But tired, too, I think, of the decades-old cultural wars we’ve been fighting. Barack Obama, for many, represents an opportunity to put these cultural wars behind us, to put the 1960s and the Vietnam War in the rear view mirror, and most of all to bury the religious divide and the red state-blue state divide that have been at the center of our politics for too many elections.

So I think Obama won this year for a number of reasons. The low popularity of President Bush and our economic travails, for sure. But it was more than that. His sense of calmness and steadiness and his stated desire to get the country beyond its recent cultural divides were, to my mind, just as important. Americans are ready to turn the page. We are ready for the future, tired of the past, and tired of fighting, and that is why I think the hackneyed old negative attacks just didn’t stick this year. The pages of history are turning before our eyes and the country is thirsty for a fresh start, not only at home but in terms of our engagement with the rest of the world.

The fact that the president-elect is an African American with a name like Barack Hussein Obama just magnifies the symbolism of the moment. It is about the most dramatic symbol possible that the United States is reinventing itself. And don’t discount the power of symbolism. Can you imagine what it feels like today to be a young African American in Harlem or Atlanta or Birmingham, suddenly feeling that anything is indeed possible in this life? Or what it’s like for young Muslims in Cairo or Tehran or Islamabad, now re-evaluating their perceptions and beliefs about the United States? Or to be on the streets of Nairobi or Johannesburg or Jakarta, knowing that the new U.S. president cares about your corner of the world?

The euphoria can’t last and the reality of the challenges before us will soon settle in again. But for the moment, a wave of hope has swept across the planet.

For a sense of the historic nature of what we’ve witnessed, here is a small selection of newspaper front pages. From around the country…

Anniston, Alabama

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Miami, Florida

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Orange County, California

And, from around the world…

Vancouver, Canada

Lisbon, Portugal

Medellin, Colombia

Kingston, Jamaica

Johannesburg, South Africa

A few months ago, I was of the opinion that this presidential election would shape up like the one in 1980. That year, voters wanted change but weren’t sure they were comfortable with the change they were being offered - that is, Ronald Reagan. Consequently, Reagan and Jimmy Carter ran close in the polls until near the end, when a critical mass of people finally decided they were comfortable enough with Reagan and the vote broke in his direction and gave him a decisive victory.

This year looked to be very similar, with the country yearning for a change of direction but unsure of the change agent before them, Barack Obama. And, in the past few months, as with Reagan in 1980, Obama has made voters comfortable enough with him to prompt a decisive late break in the polls in his direction.

So, end of story, easy win for Obama? Very likely, yes. But is it possible that 1980 is not, in the end, going to be the best comparison? Well, if John McCain manages a grand upset today, the comparison will of course be to 1948 when Harry Truman pulled off what is generally considered the biggest upset in presidential history when he defeated Thomas Dewey.

But another possibility also comes to mind. That would be the election of 1932 when, in the face of an economic crisis and after a long period of Republican rule, Franklin Roosevelt won a crushing victory and ushered in an era of Democratic dominance of national politics. It was the quintessential realigning election, in which a new coalition of voters coalesces to replace the previously dominant coalition. This tends to happen every 30-36 years, with the most recent example being when the Deep South in 1968 moved away from the Democratic party.

In recent days, as we’ve tried to ascertain the direction of this year’s vote, there has been a tightening of the polls in states such as Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virgina, all of which are crucial to any McCain hopes of an upset. If McCain indeed wins, this tightening of the polls will have been our early indicator. At the same time, though, we’ve also seen strong Republican states such as Indiana, Montana, North Dakota and Georgia slide into the toss-up category. A late-breaking wave for Obama could put all of these states into his column and mark an electoral landslide. This, combined with a large number of expected Democratic pickups in the Senate and House of Representatives, would make this an historic election along the lines of 1932.

We’ll know for certain which way this election is heading later tonight. In the meantime, if you’re hungry for some polling data or predictions, there are two great sites to check out. Pollster.com has a wealth of polling information from around the country. They currently have Obama at 291 electoral votes to 142 for McCain and 105 in the toss-up column. Also check out fivethirtyeight.com, which has run 10,000 simulations of the election based on polling, historical and demographic data. They peg Obama as having a 98.9% chance of winning the election and predict that he will accumulate at least 349 electoral votes.

Whomever you favor today, though, if you’re a U.S. citizen please go out to vote and make your voice heard.

Yes, the world is paying close attention to the upcoming presidential election in the U.S. Here is a fun example of that, as some Venetian gondoliers express their presidential preference.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for first posting this link.

A lot can still happen between now and election day, but at this point an overwhelming win by Sen. Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential election is becoming more likely by the day. Some analysts are beginning to openly speculate about the possibility of an Obama landslide.

Three weeks of historic economic upheaval have done more than just tilt a handful of once reliably Republican states in Barack Obama’s direction. Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

Four large states John McCain once seemed well-positioned to win — Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida — have in recent weeks shifted toward Obama. If Obama were to win those four states — a scenario that would represent a remarkable turn of events — he would likely surpass 350 electoral votes.

Under almost any feasible scenario, McCain cannot win the presidency if he loses any of those four states. And if Obama actually captured all four states, it would almost certainly signal a strong electoral tide that would likely sweep the Southwestern swing states — Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada — not to mention battlegrounds from New Hampshire to Iowa to Missouri.

Want more than speculation? Start by checking out the electoral map at the Real Clear Politics site. According to their objective poll analysis, Obama is already on track to win a majority of electoral votes, not even taking into account the votes from eight toss-up states. McCain’s only chance at this point is to win all of the toss-ups and reverse the current Democratic trend in one other state, such as Virginia, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.

Then check out the insightful statistical analysis by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. As of today, he gives an Obama a 91 percent chance of winning the election, with an average electoral vote total of 348. He also gives odds of 37 percent that Obama wins a landslide victory of at least 375 electoral votes.

Yes, much can still change in a month, particularly in light of the dizzying headlines of the past few weeks. But today’s trends are not looking rosy for Sen. John McCain.

This is a bit longer than my typical post, but if you’re interested at all in U.S. politics there is a lot here that will interest you and hopefully provide some food for thought and debate…

Speculation over Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate is reaching a fever pitch this week, with the selection widely expected to be made known between Wednesday and Saturday. Most reporting indicates that there is a three person shortlist - Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

If that’s truly the case, then Biden seems to be the best choice of the three for reasons that are quite well expressed here and here. Indeed, a lot of smart people today are predicting that Biden is going to be Obama’s pick. However, these things rarely go according to conventional wisdom. Therefore, I have to agree with Nate Silver that there is a reasonable prospect of a surprise choice.

Ah, but who would be the surprise? All along, Obama has really had two options - someone who “balances” the ticket by adding a long record in national politics and foreign policy, or an “outsider” who reinforces the message of bringing change to Washington. Silver thinks a surprise choice is more likely to come from the first group and he lays out the contenders: Hilary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Colin Powell. Wow! Can you imagine the media shock wave any one of these would set off? It would be a perfect Obama head fake and produce reams of publicity heading into the Democratic convention.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Obama went in this direction. The problem is, I have difficulty making the case for why it would be any one of the four.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow U.S. politics, you’ll enjoy Jib Jab’s latest animated satire of this year’s election campaign. They poke fun at everyone involved. Check it out:

Jib Jab first became famous for a satire of George Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. It’s a classic and is still fun to watch:

I hadn’t planned on following up yesterday’s post with another one connected to politics, but I think it’s important to take a moment to reflect on how the U.S. presidential election is being viewed around the world, especially in light of the history that was made yesterday when Barack Obama became the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

An obvious place to begin is in Kenya, where Obama’s family roots have sparked an outpouring of interest and celebration. This is how The Standard newspaper of Kenya described events in an article published today:

Prime Minister Raila Odinga said Obama’s victory was a momentous occasion in history. “Barack Obama’s success will inspire us all to break the shackles of ethnic preoccupations in determining political leadership,” Raila said…

Obama’s grandmother, Mama Sarah, 86, led villagers of Alego Kogelo, Siaya, where the senator’s father — Barack Obama Senior — was born, in thanking American voters for nominating her grandchild. At the home of Obama’s father, relatives, neighbours and students celebrated the triumph…

Amid song and dance, Mama Sarah announced she was preparing for an epic journey to America to witness the swearing in ceremony of her grandson as the country’s first black president.

She said: “I will go there to witness the swearing in ceremony, and to pray for him, his family and the people of America for demonstrating unity and love beyond race and colour by picking a black person to lead them.” …

At the nearby Senator Barack Obama-Kogello Secondary School, which neighbours Mama Sarah’s home, students danced, sang and shouted: “Obama Juu! Obama Juu!” The school principal, Ms Yunita Obiero, said she announced the good news to the students at assembly in the morning after hearing of Obama’s victory.

Of course, you’d expect Kenyans to be interested in this historic event, but take a look at the front pages of these newspapers from around the globe.

The Globe and Mail from Toronto, Canada:

El Mundo from Madrid, Spain:

Peru 21 from Lima, Peru:

The United Evening News from Taipei, Taiwan:

Well, you get the idea. Needless to say, this is a story that is fascinating the rest of the world.

U.S. News and World Report has a story this week that explores how the multicultural nature and “aloha spirit” of Hawaii helped shape the beliefs of Barack Obama as a young man. It’s a glimpse into the culture of one of the most famous but perhaps least understood states in the U.S. An excerpt from the article:

In Hawaii, they call it Barack Obama’s ohana or family—a reference to his philosophy that America at its best should be a big, harmonious community like his idealized version of the Aloha State, where he was born and spent his boyhood and adolescence.

Of course, Hawaii has its own history of conflict and prejudice, but that’s not the part of the islands’ culture that Obama chooses to emphasize. Instead, it is the parallel tradition of respect for diversity, tolerance, and inclusion that he prizes as a model for what he hopes to bring to the country if he wins the presidency this fall. In fact, his Hawaiian background is, in many ways, a key to understanding who the Democratic front-runner really is and what an Obama presidency would mean.

There are other important parts of Obama’s past that also provide insight into his values and his modus operandi, but Obama says the “aloha spirit” remains his personal and political inspiration.

“I do think that the multicultural nature of Hawaii helped teach me how to appreciate different cultures and navigate different cultures, out of necessity,” Obama says. “That carries over now to the work that I do because obviously that’s part of my job, not just as a candidate but also as a senator. The second thing that I’m certain of is that what people often note as my even temperament I think draws from Hawaii. People in Hawaii generally don’t spend a lot of time, you know, yelling and screamin’ at each other. I think that there just is a cultural bias toward courtesy and trying to work through problems in a way that makes everybody feel like they’re being listened to. And I think that reflects itself in my personality as well as my political style.”

I’ve long believed that, if Barack Obama were to win this year’s presidential election, the most important outcome would be a sea change in America’s relations with and image in the rest of the world. I just came across two articles that look at how some foreign leaders see the prospect of an Obama presidency and, although there are never any guarantees for how events will unfold in reality, their responses seem to at least confirm a shared hope for change.

In the first story, Newsweek interviewed Juwono Sudarsono, the Indonesia minister of defense. Here is an excerpt from his interview:

How do you think an Obama presidency would affect U.S.-Indonesia relations?
Symbolically it would be very, very important for us, as it would be for the whole Asian [and] African continents. If Obama is elected as president, I think it would reignite the United States as the real light star of hope—that it symbolizes a multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious nation. That’s the most important aspect, the symbolism of it. Translating it into American foreign policy will be much more difficult…

So you want to be friends with America, then?
I would like to engage Indonesians, particularly poor Muslims, that under Obama, America will be a much better force for good for the world. That its size, reach, economic and political influence can provide hope … If he wins, it would create an optimism among Indonesians, particularly minorities, that perhaps in the next 10 to 15 years there can be a non-Javanese president in Indonesia. It’s doable.

In the second article, Scott MacLeod of Time recounts a fascinating discussion that he had with some Iranian leaders, who suggest that an Obama presidency could potentially transform relations between the countries. MacLeod’s whole piece is worth reading for its insights into the mind of Iranian strategists, but here is the relevant section about Obama:

Besides reflexively sympathizing with an African-American with Islamic family roots, they believe Obama’s personal experiences in that regard make him more understanding of the developing world and especially the Muslim world and hence more capable of approaching Iran with a better perspective and with more sincerity. They are also impressed with what they feel is Obama’s diplomatic, respectful language, which they see as being in utter contrast with insulting U.S. rhetoric dominant during the Bush administration.

Some Iranian officials and analysts go so far as to say that Obama’s election could be a historical turning point. As one Iranian put it to me, “This could be a moment of truth for the U.S. and for Iran.” What he probably meant was that Obama’s possible willingness to make a significant outreach to Iran could be what is needed to convince Iran’s leadership that Washington is truly serious about ending the 30 years of hostile relations…

Iranians believe such a bold diplomatic initiative by Obama would be a moment of truth for Iran in the sense that Iran’s leadership would have to decide whether to continue its “controlled” hostility to the U.S., which it uses for domestic and international support, or bite the bullet and enter into a cooperative relationship entailing major compromises on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Iranians realize that another Obama may not come on to the American scene for quite a while, and that rejection of his olive branch–if one is indeed extended– might inexorably push the region to the World War III that Bush has warned about.

 Interesting stuff. What do you think?

The Pennsylvania primary is only four days away. So here’s Baracky - channeling Rocky and new politics at the same time. It’s fun and ingenious. Take a look.

Nicholas Kristof had a thought-provoking column in the Sunday NY Times about the dumbing down of America and what this says not only about U.S. culture, but also about the potential future of our competitiveness in the global arena. An excerpt…

Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution. Depending on how the questions are asked, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Americans believe in each. A 34-nation study found Americans less likely to believe in evolution than citizens of any of the countries polled except Turkey.

President Bush is also the only Western leader I know of who doesn’t believe in evolution, saying “the jury is still out.” No word on whether he believes in little green men.

Only one American in 10 understands radiation, and only one in three has an idea of what DNA does. One in five does know that the Sun orbits the Earth …oh, oops.

“America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism,” Susan Jacoby argues in a new book, “The Age of American Unreason.” She blames a culture of “infotainment,” sound bites, fundamentalist religion and ideological rigidity for impairing thoughtful debate about national policies.

How does any of this really affect us? Kristof suggests that…

…we as a nation will have difficulty making crucial decisions if we don’t have an intellectual climate that fosters an informed and reasoned debate. How can we decide on embryonic stem cells if we don’t understand biology? How can we judge whether to invade Iraq if we don’t know a Sunni from a Shiite? (editor’s note: for a scary view of how little even our government leaders know about this topic, check out this older post of mine.)

Our competitiveness as a nation in coming decades will be determined not only by our financial accounts but also by our intellectual accounts. In that respect, we’re at a disadvantage, particularly vis-à-vis East Asia with its focus on education.

From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are…

There’s no simple solution, but the complex and incomplete solution is a greater emphasis on education at every level. And maybe, just maybe, this cycle has run its course, for the last seven years perhaps have discredited the anti-intellectualism movement. President Bush, after all, is the movement’s epitome — and its fruit.

Consider the following two quotes. Does one strike you as more likely to be true than the other one?

First, these thoughts from U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa):

“When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States — I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?” …

“I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.” …

“Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter,” King said. “It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name.”

Then, from an article by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Monthly:

Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one…What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan…

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

Personally, I think Sullivan is a lot closer to the truth. Obama’s election wouldn’t magically fix any national security or economic challenges, but it would almost instantly change the world’s image of America. In a positive way.

And in regards to Obama’s name, tell me, if the Senator were named, say, Stanley Armour Dunham, would people like King be so inclined to raise issues about his name? Doubtful. Which just shows the disingenuousness of these ploys. Obama was named after his father and his paternal grandfather, but if he had been named after his maternal grandfather, on the other hand, well - hello, Stanley Armour Dunham.

King’s statements are just another cynical attempt to scare people into voting against one candidate instead of for another one. Oooh, Obama seems like a foreigner (remember how French John Kerry was made out to be in 2004?). Oooh, terrorists are going to dance in the streets because they love Obama.  Oooh, maybe Obama is an Islamic Manchurian candidate. Or, even better, maybe he’s the Antichrist. Give me a break.

As the U.S. presidential contest degenerates into a series of Saturday Night Live skits and arguments over who is more capable of answering a non-existent red phone in the Oval Office, it’s becoming apparent that any serious talk of issues has been postponed, at best, for the time being. Which is unfortunate, since numerous important topics deserve to be discussed and debated.

The NY Times last Sunday ran an interesting op-ed feature in which it asked eight recent candidates for president to write about one issue they would still be discussing if they were still in the race. One of the more intriguing responses came from Chris Dodd on the country’s lack of investment in infrastructure. Here is some of what he wrote:

On Aug. 1, the bridge carrying Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River buckled and broke. Thirteen people were killed. More than 100 were injured.

Afterward, we learned the frightening facts: 160,570 of our bridges are in just as dangerous a shape; a third of our roads are in poor or mediocre condition; some of our biggest cities depend on water and sewage systems over a century old.

With every bursting pipe, potholed road and derailed train, the conclusion became inescapable: America’s backbone is decaying.

Dodd then wrote about his proposal for a National Infrastructure Bank that ”would unite the public and private sectors to complete large-scale works. Funds would go to the most qualified projects, not those with the most political clout.”

And, really, if we’re honest, it’s not just a matter of repairing roads, bridges and sewage systems. At some point, the U.S. has to modernize its infrastructure, both for environmental and productivity reasons. Thomas Geoghegan just wrote about this for The American Prospect, bemoaning the clogged highways and antiquated public transit systems that plague much of the country.

The point is we’re trapped. We can’t move…Compare the U.S. to the European Union. Over there, thanks to Eurostar (the high-speed rail system), easy transit to the airports, and Ryanair, Europeans have more geographic mobility than we do. Eurostar is more important to European unity than adopting a new EU constitution…

It’s easier to get from Dublin to Madrid, where Irish kids commute to do start ups. Over there, from Paris to Brussels, I puff along on air. Over here, on our dilapidated rails, I have to jolt along, in effect, by stage coach. It seems obvious that we should invest in high speed rail and mass transit, but we don’t…

Here’s the 2005 U.S. infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers: aviation D+, bridges C, drinking water D-, rails C-, roads D, school buildings D.

Infrastructure is not a sexy issue, by any means, which is why it doesn’t get discussed much in political campaigns. But that doesn’t make it unimportant. After all, as Steve Clemons recently noted:

There are a lot of reasons Rome fell, but one of the biggies is that Rome overspent on its military and the maintenance of empire and underinvested in its core, which slowly rotted.

For most of my adult life, I’ve struggled to determine which generation I belong to. Not because I don’t know when I was born, but because I’ve never felt connected to the Baby Boom generation that, according to demographers, I technically belong to. However, since I was born at the end of that demographic explosion, I shared none of the iconic experiences of that generation. When the older Boomers were experiencing Vietnam, Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury, I was learning how to read.

This feeling of disconnection extends to my politics. For years, I’ve wanted our national leaders to get us past the seemingly never-ending battles that began in the 1960s and have carried into the Clinton and Bush presidencies. The old labels and the old fights don’t seem as relevant in today’s world. In this respect, I think Barack Obama has his finger on the pulse of a real desire among voters for change. But what some pundits fail to realize is that it’s not just a desire to move past the Bush presidency - it’s also a desire to move beyond a lot of the tired political battles of recent decades.

So I was thrilled to read this recent piece by Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, in which he breaks down some of the generational and political differences between “Early Boomers” and “Late Boomers.” An excerpt:

In the case of boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—the whole frame is wrong. It’s based on birthrates, not common cultural and political affinities…But those boomers born after 1955, now mostly in their 40s, missed Woodstock (unless a few snuck in as 14-year-olds). Our coming-of-age decade was the 1970s, not the 1960s. Our presidents were Carter and Reagan, not JFK, LBJ and Nixon. Our calling card was irony, not rebellion.

So it’s no surprise that Hillary Clinton (born 1947) would have a different generational identity from Barack Obama (born 1961). Late Boomers, dubbed “Generation Jones” by activist Jonathan Pontell (because of in-between anonymity and lots of Joneses in popular ’70s songs), make up the largest share of the voter pie—26 percent. Despite our size … we spent years feeling like generational stepchildren. It was as if we arrived late at the ’60s party, after everything turned bitter.

But if we weren’t convincing flower children (or anti-hippies, like George W. Bush), we weren’t part of Generation X either. The Gen-Xers were too cynical. Instead we became the perennial swing voters, with residual ’60s idealism mixed with the pragmatism and materialism of the ’80s. Even as demographers concluded that generations are really 10 to 15 years, not 20, no one represented us.

It’s an exaggeration to say that Obama now does, but at least he understands the argument…Well before he challenged the Clintons, Obama rejected what he called “the same old arguments” between left and right. His campaign is about “turning the page,” not just from BushClintonBushClinton, but from the cultural contentiousness of those years.

Today is Super Tuesday in the U.S. presidential race and 22 states across the country will cast ballots in the Democratic and Republican nomination battles. Although I’ve written about this already (and here), it bears repeating that this election is a big deal not only in the U.S., but also around the world. This recent article in the NY Times looked at the world’s fascination with this election.

To look at the reams of coverage in newspapers outside the United States or to follow the hours of television news broadcasts, you might conclude that foreigners had a vote in selecting an American presidential candidate — or, at least, deserved one, so great is America’s influence on their lives.

From Berlin to London to Jakarta, the destinies of Democratic and Republican contenders in Iowa or New Hampshire, or Nevada or South Carolina, have become news in a way that most political commentators cannot recall. It is as if outsiders are pining for change in America as much as some American presidential candidates are promising it.

The personalities of the Democratic contest in particular — the potential harbinger of America’s first African-American or female president — have fascinated outsiders as much as, if not more than, the candidates’ policies on Iraq, immigration or global finances.

And there is a palpable sense that, while democratic systems seem clunky and uninspiring to voters in many parts of the Western world, America offers a potential model for reinvigoration.

“It is in many ways an uplifting sight to see a great democracy functioning at that most basic of levels,” said Lord McNally, the leader of the small opposition Liberal Democrats in Britain’s House of Lords. “Even with all the money, the publicity, the power of television, the person who wants to be the most powerful man or woman in the world still has to get down and talk in small town halls and stop people on the street and stand on soapboxes.”

There are many reasons for this fervent interest. Part of it is simply the fact that the U.S. president is such an important global figure. Part of it is a yearning among many for a new direction in U.S. foreign policy. And part of it, of course, is also the fascination that the next president could be a woman or an African-American. Some examples of these sentiments:

“There is a desperate sense of need that there must be something better than Bush out there,” said Dean Godson, head of a conservative research group in London called Policy Exchange. Or, as Thomas Valasek, a spokesman for the Center for European Reform in London, put it: “The world at large has a massive stake in the outcome of the elections. Never before has the U.S. had such a terrible reputation, a terrible image.” …

Ramesh Thakur, a political science professor in India, wrote: “We foreigners can but pray that the new president, whoever he or she may be, will return America to its strengths, values and the tradition of exporting hope and other optimism. And so help to lift America and the world up, not tear one another down.”

In Japan, too, there are hopes for American renewal. “Already the fixed idea, ‘Only a white man can become president,’ has been broken,” the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun said Jan. 15. “We are witnessing the history, the process of grass-roots democracy turning into the U.S. strength.”

We may not know the nominees of the major parties at the end of the day, but we will certainly be a lot closer to those decisions. And the world will be watching.