Of all the people I work with, including colleagues, freelancers, and authors, I only know of one who said he preferred McCain to Obama. He's an Israeli living in New York City who thought that if Iran needed bombing, McCain was the one most likely to get it done. Talk about your one-issue voters!
Even a sampling of international authors turned up nary a wiff of support for McCain. A colleague in the U.K. expressed great relief that Palin would not be representing the U.S. at World meetings. To him, that was the scariest thing on the Republican ticket.
An author in the Netherlands couldn't understand how anyone could believe Obama was a socialist. He seemed rather conservative by Dutch standards. He also felt that 90% of Dutch voters would have supported Obama.
A German friend living in the Philippines expressed horror at the thought of any more years of Bush's failed policies. How could American's have kept him in office for two terms?
Another colleague in the U.K. commented that he hoped the Secret Service was being particularly watchful, which seems to be something that many people are worried about, including the CIA. I read today that they've got a whole new team attached to Obama (almost literally).
The fact is, the person we elect to be President is important to nearly everyone in the world in a way that no other world leaders can quite equal. What has made this so painfully obvious is the current failed administration of Bush and his cronies. Our cowboy president's reckless, heedless, and greedy reign may have diminished our stature in the world, but not our importance. We really can wreck the world's economy without any help from our allies.
Obama makes me proud to be an American. When was the last time I could say that?
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2 comments:
One-issue voters scare me. Especially when the issue is a piece of land smaller than New York City halfway around the world.
The fact that the one-issue voter you described could very well have also been describing a relative of mine makes me even more scared of them. Sigh.
I'll admit to not actually being superbly impressed with Obama until his acceptance speech, when he said exactly what I've been saying all along: his election to office isn't a win, it's just a chance to do something right for once. When he said that at face value, that's when he became my president.
Meitar-
Thanks for adding an American's view from down-under. One-issue voters are the scariest because there's no balance, no ability to see the inherent interrelationship of all things, including political policies. It's the one-issue voters who gave us eight-years of the worst president ever, two wars in the middle east, and the first global economic collapse since the depression.
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