Obama: The World’s Candidate

Watching America.com is running a multiple feature of global stories about the candidate who has the world’s attention – Obama. He is has the world’s attention not because he is personally more interesting than any other candidate, but because he is symbolically the most important – and by far.

The prospect of a black leader is engaging the world’s media for some very important reasons.

First, the selection of a leader from an ethnic minority is extremely progressive prima facie.

Second, it would be all the more dramatic following a period of extreme liberal retreat and toothlessness.

Third, the choice faced by America has a special poignancy and self-defining importance by virtue of the brutality and deep cultural importance of the still-raw history that defines the place of African-Americans in the United States.

Fourth – and this is the reason that might be less obvious from the media rooms of these States but may be the most interesting – every open country faces its own huge questions around the integration and enfranchisement of its minorities, and have their own cultural groups which could not easily be imagined as providing a leader: this huge choice for America could, in a way, propel the developed world’s bastion of conservatism, Bush’s United States, to a beacon of progressive societal choice, which would, by its existence alone, shine a new light on racial issues particular to countries very far away, both geographically and politically. And for that reason, whether explicitly stated or not, the foreign press watch Obama’s journey to the White House as closely as they’ve watched any.

Stories currently featured at Watching America include

How Far Can Obama Go? from Nigeria,

The Start of a Revolution? from Germany,

Down with Obama (Up with Obama) from South Africa,

Obama’s the Man from Canada,

Win Marks Watershed in Black History from Australia,

World’s Largest Videocracy from Israel,

Obama’s Wonderful Journey from the U.K.,

Cynicism Eclipsed from the U.K..

Check Watching America.com regularly for articles on the U.S. election from around the world.