Celebrations in Jakarta. Hopefully this election doesn't derail my thesis.
Are some of these people being overly enthusiastic? Expecting too much? Interpreting things incorrectly? Probably. But they're happy, and as far as foreign relations go, enthusiasm on both sides is really all you need to make things happen. Their enthusiasm means this is the biggest chance we've had in decades to cement a new way of working with the world. That's undeniable. Now we just have to make it happen. Hopefully the embassies and expats are already doing that overseas. I think the State Department and the Foreign Service will get more power than they've had in a while; and that's always a good thing. Maybe we'll all learn to follow around Christopher Hill instead of General Petraeus. I hope Hagel gets a job in the new cabinet too, because he knows what communication means.
Of course it will suck if it doesn't work out, but we have opportunities now that we definitely did not have in 2000 or 2004, that we definitely wouldn't have had if it had been Hillary instead - and not just because she's a woman, but because she's nothing new. She'd mean nothing to anyone overseas. It means there's a window of opportunity. And while it's easy to think nothing will change, we've never had this kind of a window of opportunity before as far as world opinion is concerned, so it's impossible to establish a precedent.
(I should say that even as an American I don't care much about American domestic politics and I will probably never have any hope for Congress's ability to do anything except be an obstacle, which is why I'm glad the Democrats at least have a majority.)
**
The Bush administration disparaged numerous treaties advocated through the United Nations, including the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the International Criminal Court and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. His administration also withheld funds from the United Nations Population Fund and worked against a treaty limiting small arms trafficking, among others.
Mr. Ban suggested all that might change. “I also expect the United States will take a more active participation in all United Nations organizations and activities,’’ he said.
The secretary general noted that in February 2007 he and Mr. Obama met by chance on a shuttle flight from Washington to New York. The senator asked him many questions, particularly about nuclear proliferation issues involving Iran and North Korea as well as the challenges of reforming the United Nations itself.
“He was very engaging and he knew a lot about the United Nations and I was very much encouraged,’’ Mr. Ban said.
**
Thousands of people sang, danced, blew whistles, honked horns, hugged, kissed and thumped on drums — all down the same streets where not so long ago huge flames of protest had raged. “Who needs a passport?” people yelled. “We’re going to America!”
It was sweetness on many levels. A black man in the White House. A half-Kenyan at the helm of the most powerful country on the planet. And a fair election, which Kenyans have learned is nothing to take for granted.
People here stayed up all night, swatting mosquitoes as they watched the election results trickle in on TV sets with fuzzy pictures. The last time this many Kenyans were riveted by an election — their own, in December 2007 — riots erupted after the opposition candidate lost and Kenya’s incumbent president won. Widespread allegations of vote rigging sent tens of thousands of young men into the streets, to loot, burn and kill. Much of Kisumu, usually a relaxed town along the steamy, hippo-infested shores of Lake Victoria, was ravaged.
But on Wednesday, many of the same young men who had been doing the burning, the looting and worse, were all smiles, part of the happy wave of emotion that coursed through Kisumu. Passersby and mini-bus drivers and bicycle taxi men got swept into the streets, where Obama posters, Obama pins and even Obama wall clocks were selling faster than juicy papayas.
“This has restored my faith in democracy,” said Duncan Adel, a computer technician who had been part of the election protests last year.
**
Minutes before show time, the $2 million high-tech backdrop for Al Arabiya’s election day news coverage was not working. But the channel’s executive editor, Nabil al-Khatib, was calm. He is a tall man, with an easy presence, decades of experience in Middle East news and a conviction that events would not surprise.
Senator John McCain, he believed, was going to win.
“Would Americans choose someone who thinks outside the box?” he asked rhetorically as an army of engineers and technicians scrambled to get the big screen working again Wednesday morning. “This is just too good to be true.”
Al Arabiya is a Saudi-owned, Arabic-language television news channel based in the Arab world’s capital of consumer spending, Dubai. Al Arabiya’s regional audience was overwhelmingly in favor of Senator Barack Obama, the editors said, but in the emirates, it seemed, there were at least some people who were certain that Americans would never vote for someone as different as Mr. Obama. “McCain will win,” Bilal al-Bodour, a deputy minister of culture for the United Arab Emirates, said a day earlier. “That is the American mentality.”
Mr. Khatib had the same sense. He stood in the back of the newsroom, a circular studio wrapped in a belt of video screens, all bathed in red and blue lights. The engineers had fixed the digital backdrop. “This is a historic moment not only for the United States, but so we can all get away from perceptions about religion and race and instead consider the quality of the person,” Mr. Khatib said.
Al Arabiya was determined to present news coverage of the election that was not biased toward either candidate. There was concern, for example, about the banner swirling across a screen. It was red, the station’s color, but it might appear to signal support for the Republicans.
As the night went on, it was clear who was the favorite candidate on the set.
“I want Obama to win with 99 percent, like Saddam Hussein,” said Hani Abu Ayyash, who was monitoring the early returns at his computer. “I swear, if he doesn’t win, I’m going to take it personally.”
And then, a few minutes before 8 a.m., CNN called the race, declaring Senator Obama the winner, and there was, for a brief moment, a cheer in the studio, a fist raised, and then back to the broadcast. Mr. Khatib clasped his hands over his head, like a champion declaring victory, and smiled broadly.
“I am positively surprised,” he said. “It’s great.”
**
The Indian Express, whose editorial pages had been fond of the Bush White House over the last couple of years, echoed how swiftly and decisively the next president would have to act. “The way the world has been enthralled by the contest is a message that the dominant sentiment, after the Bush presidency, is not so much anti-Americanism, but exasperation with the uses of American power and a concurrent belief that with adequate political will the superpower can repair its agenda for the greater global good.”
Some Indians used the occasion to introspect. Krishna Prasad, a magazine editor who runs a blog, churumuri.com, invited readers to consider when India could expect to elect a Prime Minister from its largest minority group: Muslims. He said he was surprised that more than a third of his roughly 600 respondents said they believed it was possible.
**
“The biggest economy in the world has a leader that the world can talk to,” said Alejandro Saks, an Argentine television scriptwriter. “There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different type of leader.”
**
“This is the first American election I can remember in my lifetime that I was eager to witness,” said Armando Díaz, 24, who works at Movistar, a cellphone company here.
“Before, we’d just switch the channel to baseball,” said Mr. Díaz, gazing at a television announcer on Globovisión and wrapping Venezuelan rapid-fire Spanish around the names of states like Connecticut and Rhode Island. “It’s kind of nice to feel good about the United States again.”
As they do in almost any gathering here in which people examine the toxicity of Venezuelan political life, in this instance through the lens of the election of Barack Obama as president, jokes ensued.
Sitting under a poster of a playful painting by Carlos Cruz-Díez, a kinetic artist, most of those present proudly identified themselves as “pitiyanquis,” or petite yanquis, thus appropriating a vitriolic insult used with increasing frequency by President Hugo Chávez to describe his opponents.
“I wonder if Chávez can stop referring to the United States with such hatred, if only for a few days,” said Lucy Martínez, 44, a teacher at a primary school in Petare. “It would be nice to get a break from that.”
As if on cue, Globovisión shifted its broadcast to focus on a political cartoon from Tuesday’s newspapers here, showing an image of Mr. Chávez and the headline “Anti-Imperial Discourse,” under a smaller photo of Mr. Obama next to the words, “Expiration Date, 11/4.”
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