The Whole World Celebrates The Beginning Of Obama's Presidency

I spent most of December in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world. When I first arrived in the capital, Bamako, the only place most Americans would recognize as even remotely part of our world, I was stunned to see American flag decals and Obama stickers everywhere. I mean everywhere. I never saw anything like it. Every taxi, every truck, every bus had some kind of a pro-America or pro-Obama sign. Even more shocking was that when I left Bamako and visited remote parts of the country-- including villages with no electricity and far from roads-- I still found American flags and Obama-Biden bumperstickers!

Across Africa people are accutely aware that it is an African-American who is becoming president of this country today. And I know it is difficult for people who don't travel outside the country to understand this, but for many, if not most, people across the world, the president of the United States really is looked at as the leader of the whole world. In the last 7 years people have been very, very disappointed. And now the world is ready to be inspired by America again. Today's NY Times ran a piece datelined Paris about how the rest of the world looks at the inauguration.

Around the globe, from Hong Kong to London, Barack Obama’s inauguration became a day for millions to fete an event they refused to see as reserved for Americans and insisted was one that touched lives far beyond the United States.

The focus for Americans may well have been defined by the election of the first black president, by the end of the Bush Administration, by the promise of renewal or by the hope for change. But, in specific terms, many outsiders saw the transition as a signal for their own new era, a starting gun for a new manner of international behavior.

...In Paris, a celebration at the ornate Hôtel de Ville on the banks of the River Seine was set to be followed by less formal merriment around the city. The American Library in Paris offered a screening and a debate. British cities including Belfast, Liverpool, Leeds and London, scheduled big-screen viewings of the inauguration.

...In Tottenham, a multiethnic neighborhood of north London, Juliet Alexander, the organizer of an inauguration celebration in an arts center, said the significance of the American election lay in the belief that “he is not just a black president, he is a politically educated man who has touched the imaginations of people all around the world.”

“He represents a movement to people-- and we are happy to celebrate that,” she said in a statement.

Many of the events in Paris and London were organized by groups representing American Democrats living abroad, but, like Mr. Obama’s election campaign, they drew in many others who saw the change of leadership in Washington as bearing directly on their own lives and hopes.

As President Shimon Peres of Israel put it, “Today is a great day not only for the United States of America, but for the entire world.”

“I pray here in Jerusalem that Barack Obama will be a great president of the United States. If he will be a great president of the United States, he will serve all humankind, all nations and all persons,” he said.

Indeed, Israeli forces were pulling out of Gaza on Tuesday, anxious to be out after their war on Hamas by the time the inauguration ceremonies began in Washington.

The political significance was not lost on German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said she hoped the Obama era would be built on a broad international agreement that “no single country can solve the problems of the world,” a hope built in part on the perceived unilateralism and bellicosity of the Bush years from 2000 to 2008.

It's estimated that more people in the U.S., and more people around the world, are watching Obama's inauguration than have ever watched anything on TV... ever! If you've been watching TV-- other than Fox-- you know the whole country has been galvanized by Obama in a way that no one has united the country since FDR first came to power in the midst of the last Great Depression. There is a great sense of history today, unlike anything I can remember. Earlier, we looked at some of the skunks at the party in the media and in the GOP. Even today, Texas reactionary and extremist John Cornyn, was threatening to place a hold on the confirmation of Hillary Clinton as Obama's Secretary of State. I wish President Obama all the best in terms of his post-partisan idealism-- all the best and a good defense against an Inside the Beltway power system where the good will is unlikely to last beyond Friday.


UPDATE: Gingrich Isn't Buying Into Any Post-Partisanship, No Way

When Newt Gingrich was driven from the speakership and Congress in disgrace he went out as one of the most disliked and divisive figures ever. Looks like nothing has changed at all. He's urging his fellow right-wingers to fight President Obama's from Day One. Knowing it isn't a battle they can win, Gingrich is urging rightist senators to make a stink about the nomination of Timothy Geithner.

Some leading Senate Republicans publicly have avoided confrontation of the nomination with the economy in dire straights.

"Now is not the time to think in small political terms," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said recently. "I don't see any desire by the Republican Party to play 'gotcha' on this."
Mr. Graham said he thinks Mr. Geithner is "the right guy" for the job.

But Mr. Gingrich insists that it "would be wrong for someone who did not pay taxes to become secretary of the Treasury in charge of getting taxes from the rest of us. It would be doubly wrong to appoint him in an administration which intends to raise taxes on the rest of us."

I thought not paying taxes was a Republican ideal. Perhaps Mr. Gingrich should make a statement about the $100 billion that is lost annually to the U.S. Treasury by because Republican-sponsored loopholes allow big corporations to use off shore tax havens with no fears of retributions.