From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens. Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama”, as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility. But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Obama’s election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm — a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos — saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course. They say the country that weakened democratic forces abroad through a tireless but often ineffective campaign for democracy was now shining a transformative beacon with its own democratic exercise.It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few — Israel, Georgia, the Philippines — favoring a victory for Senator John McCain. The world’s view of an Obama presidency presents a paradox. His election embodies what many consider unique about the United States. Yet, America’s sense of its own specialness, of its destiny and mission, has driven it astray, they say. They want Obama, the beneficiary and exemplar of American exceptionalism, to act like everyone else, only better, to shift American policy and somehow to project both humility and leadership.And there are others who fear that Obama will be soft in a hard-edged world where what is required is a clear line in the sand to fanatics, aggressors and bullies. An Obama presidency, they say, risks appeasement. Such contradictory demands and expectations may reflect, in part, the unusual makeup of a man of mixed race and origin whose life and upbringing have touched several continents.“People feel he is a part of them because he has this multiracial, multiethnic and multinational dimension,” said Philippe Sands, a British international lawyer and author who travels frequently, adding that people find some thread of their own hopes and ideals in Obama. “He represents, for people in so many different communities and cultures, a personal connection. There is an immigrant component and a minority component.”
