The World Reacts

When I graduated from college I went to Europe "for the summer." That summer lasted for almost 7 years and included a VW van drive across Asia to Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal... and back. Since then I've spent a month each year-- at the minimum-- overseas, revisiting places I loved, like Italy, Turkey, France, Morocco, India, or discovering new places I missed the first time around. Last year I went to Myanmar for the first time and soon I'll be going to Senegal for a little acclimatization before heading off to trek in the Dogone country of Mali and visit The Sheltering Sky's Timbuktu, both in Mali. So, thank God America's voters-- or election rustlers-- didn't decide to inflict yet another George Bush on us... and the world.

Way back in October we noted that, with a few outlandish exceptions (Sudan, Cuba, Iraq... Namibia), the entire world was rooting for Obama to beat McCain. (And in the end, even Namibia hopped on the Obama bandwagon. Regretably, Myanmar was split exactly down the middle, 50-50; they'd still be counting votes the way they are in Charlottesville tonight.) Oh, and then there are the shrinking and dark little corners of the Fourth Reich. Other than that, the whole world is united in joy and hope.

And, although people all over the world were thrilled that Americans voted for Obama instead of McSame (63,974,022 to 56,453,789)-- hailing it as "a renewal of America's ability to inspire"-- nowhere was the excitement more heartfelt than in Kenya, Obama's father's homeland. But because of my upcoming trip to Mali I was wondering what they had to say about it there. I found a quote from the president, Amadou Toumani Touré: "The United States has given a lesson, a lesson in maturity and a lesson in democracy. The essential considerations that prevailed were really the considerations of a man who had a program.''

Over the past 8 years-- and especially the past 4-- I've experienced a very different kind of reaction to my country-- and even to myself-- than I had experienced since Nixon's provocative trip to Venezuela-- and I only experienced that on television... as part of a political strategy for terrorist-haters back home. After the Clinton idyllic Clinton-lovin' years, our co-inhabitants of the planet were mostly mortified with what we put over ourselves. Yesterday they celebrated just like we did.

Today, we are all Americans.

For longtime U.S. expatriates like me-- someone far more accustomed to being targeted over unpopular policies, for having my very Americanness publicly assailed-- it feels like an extraordinary turnabout.

Like a long journey over a very bumpy road has abruptly come to an end.
And it's not just me.

An American colleague in Egypt says several people came up to her on the streets of Cairo and said: "America, hooray!" Others, including strangers, expressed congratulations with a smile and a hand over their hearts.

Another colleague, in Amman, says Jordanians stopped her on the street and that several women described how they wept with joy.

When you're an American abroad, you can quickly become a whipping post. Regardless of your political affiliation, if you happen to be living and working overseas at a time when the United States has antagonized much of the world, you get a lot of grief.

A friend of mine sent me this today, pointing out, at least implicitly, that foreigners knew what people in the old slave-holding states and the Mormon Empire can't grasp:



Yep... time to break out the old American flag clothes and parade down the Champs-Élysées.