A Global Election

Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States and the entire world is watching, not just Americans. I had never expected to see so much about the US election overseas but news of the election is everywhere. Working abroad in an international city just makes the global impact of this election that much more apparent. The overwhelming consensus leading up to November 4th was that if the world could vote, Obama would have no competition. As it turns out, it was still a comprehensive win. The feeling that I've experienced in the past few days is that rest of the world is just as excited about the results as the majority of Americans are.

All of us TWC interns stayed up until 4 or 5am on Tuesday night to watch the election coverage in our flats. It was no secret that most all of us, sans one or two slightly confused individuals, cast our absentee votes for Obama. Some people were given the next day off from work and had a little more freedom to celebrate than others. I was in bed by 4am after Obama's win had been secured since I still had work in the morning. However I was woken an hour or two later by the joyous cheers of my flatmates outside my window in the street. I just smiled, rolled over and fell back asleep. Apparently the other inhabitants of our building weren't quite as amused as we all got a warning email the next day about the noise. Oh well, perhaps everyone should have been more conscious of our neighbors, however losing 15 minutes of sleep once every four years is pretty negligible in my opinion.

Every single newspaper in London had Obama on the front page the next morning. My co-workers all asked me what I thought about the election. Everyone was at their desks looking at blue and red, but mostly blue, maps of the US on their computers all day long. The general feeling even in London was that people really respected Obama, and even the US population for voting for him. I have to say, that I am often conscious of being American when traveling abroad.

I stay conscious of my accent, the way I dress and the way I act around other cultures, because honestly, and it's no secret, some people are not particularly fond of Americans. Their criticisms are often stereotypes, based on false assumptions, but you still have to be careful of your actions. The last thing you want is a confrontation in a place where you don't know the culture, the land or the laws. But, for the first time in my lifetime, I think there has been an immediate positive change in the world's general view of the US, and more importantly, Americans.

A story in one of the free London papers described how a US journalist was traveling on a bus in Vienna the day after the election when a woman walked up and kissed after him hearing his American accent. I have been approached by a couple Londoners simply looking at me and saying "Obama!" with a fist-pump after hearing my accent. My sentiment is that people around the world are looking on us in a much better light than they have in the recent past. I'm not sure if you can truly feel that back home in the states, but I'd like to tell you that I am really noticing it. My favorite front page newspaper headline from London described November 4th, 2008 as "'The day America became a little bit cool again." So, while I still haven't received any unprovoked kisses, the average volume of my voice may go up a couple decibels in the following weeks.