World Barracks For Barack
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 8, 2008
MANY politicians are more popular outside their own countries than at home. Mikhail Gorbachev is still lauded in the West as the architect of perestroika, the bringer of glasnost, the man who peacefully ended the Cold War. In Russia he was regarded as the man who spoke bad Russian who lost the empire.
Tony Blair is still highly regarded around the world, even as Brits had become tired of his spin and his slavish devotion to the war in Iraq. As the leader of the free - or at least heavily discounted - world, Barack Obama arrives in the job with more support overseas than at home. Unusually for an American president, Obama knows of the world outside the lower 48 states. Not just his Kenyan connection, but his time spent in Indonesia. In the campaign, this was seen not as a positive, but as a matter of suspicion. A BBC World Service poll in September found that more than 20,000 people in 22 countries preferred Obama by a four-to-one margin over John McCain. Unusually, Obama chose to speak directly to the rest of the world in his acceptance speech this week. "To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand." We can only hope.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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