The World Hopes for Its First President

If Obama loses, the reaction in America will likely play out along the same old divides. Democrats will interpret the loss in the framework of recent election defeats: we could not elect Al Gore or John Kerry, and now Obama, even in the midst of crisis. Their talk will turn to a new third way. Republicans will look at their implausible victory as a reason to suspend or at least dial down the soul-searching they are undergoing now, over whether they drifted too far right—or not far enough. Conservatives will crow. Liberals will weep. African-Americans will gnash their teeth. (And the media, it must be said, will be shamed for its poll-driven reporting that showed virtually no path to a McCain victory.)

The rest of the world, for its part, will see something different. America, already said to be on the decline, will look all the smaller for having failed to redeem itself with the election of a young black man with African and South Asian roots and a Middle Eastern middle name. And it will look smaller still for having had the opportunity to do so, yet failing to see the opportunity, let alone capitalize on it and breaking a line that goes back more than 200 years in the United States. To the rest of the world, in electing another Republican America will have appeared not only to extend the agonies of the Bush years, but to have missed a historical chance for which it's hard to find a precedent or parallel in any country: the ultimate triumph of a long-oppressed minority.

The world has already cast its vote, in poll after poll, and what it wants, and may not get even if Obama is elected, is an American Gandhi, a Gandhi who not only speaks for the oppressed minority but was one of them. The world caught a glimpse of their man on a sunny afternoon last July in Berlin. He stood at the base of Berlin's Siegessäule, or Victory Column, in the Tiergarten. Some 200,000 people fanned out before him, a crowd much larger than any he had drawn at home during 18 months on the stump. He took the opportunity to address a much larger audience. "People of the world," Barack Obama said, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." That may be too much for any president to deliver. Indeed the world may be setting itself up for a rather rude awakening when an elected Obama proves far more pragmatic, less progressive, than expected. But taking their cue from the title of his second book, the people of the world he addressed that day have invested in him the audacity of their hope.

With Tracy Mcnicoll in Paris, Mac Margolis in Rio De Janeiro, Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo, William Underhill in London, Barrett Sheridan in New York And Melinda Liu in Beijing

© 2008