BARACK Obama's identity empowers him to relate to the rest of the world with a potential authority unknown in history, Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly writes.
BARACK Obama depicts his win as the latest realisation of the American dream. He is manifestly an agent of change yet continuity. This is the key to his victory. For many white Americans he is giving their country back to them. For many black Americans he gives them a new stake in their country.
If this is truly the meaning of Obama's victory - the idea of the US being renewed - then it matters not just for America but for the world.
Obama, in a fashion reminiscent of John Kennedy, but more than any other US president-elect, is a candidate of the world. And he is reaching out to the world aware that this election had a global participation.
In his victory address, Obama spoke to the peoples “watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared”.
Its atmospherics are dramatically different from President George W. Bush's post-9/11 battle cry in anger that “every nation in every region now has a decisions to make” - either you are with us or against us.
Obama, unlike Bush, presents as candidate for an inter-dependent world. Bush's tragedy is that his first term folly destroyed his ability to persuade others to follow him.
As the first African-American president, raised partly in Indonesia, Obama's identity empowers him to relate to the rest of the world with a potential authority unknown in history.
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