The world has an interest in the outcome of the US presidential election because, in spite of everything, America remains the world’s pre-eminent military, political, financial and cultural power, said The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
Every United States presidential election is important. Most of them provide dramatic political theater. All of them are compulsively watched by the rest of the world. The election of 2008, however, is a record-breaker in all departments. It is important because it comes at the end of George Bush’s calamitous two terms and amid such economic turmoil. It is memorable because it has involved so many ground-breaking candidates and long campaigns on both sides. And it has been watched and experienced by the world as no American election has been before. Not since the Kennedy era has such a contest resonated so potently with so many people in America and beyond, including in this country. But the circumstances of this year’s contest, the character of the protagonists and the immediacy of the Internet age combine to mean that the 2008 election is likely to make a defining statement about America for this global generation that may eclipse even the impact of the contest of 1960. The world may not have the vote on Tuesday. But it certainly has a candidate. That candidate is Sen. Barack Obama. He is not just the preferred choice of liberal Europeans. He is also the choice of the rest of the world, of all races and creeds — and of young people in particular. No buses crammed with lawyers would be needed to validate the accuracy of these votes. He commands this support, not only because he is not George Bush but because he personifies so much of what the world still admires about America. Obama’s greatest achievement is to have seized on the failures of the Republican era and to have developed a serious new progressive coalition and programme. America stands on the threshold of a new era. That is what the nation needs and the world craves, and Americans should elect Barack Obama as their president.
