Please Stay Tuned For This Party Political Announcement

Through much of the first half of the year, I was asked a lot about Barack Obama by people who know me as an American or people I don't know but who heard my accent. At first, of course, it was about Hillary Clinton and Obama, and then just about Obama. The name John McCain has rarely if ever been mentioned. Perhaps it's people knowing my politics, guessing my politics from what they know about me, or playing the averages because they believe Democratic voters are more likely to live overseas than Republicans. Whatever the case, interest seemed high only in those candidates who were the exceptions to the rule in American presidential politics: a woman and a black man.

I have a feeling that if the citizens of the world were allowed to vote, Obama would win in a walk. I might chalk that up to my own personal biases if it weren't for the confirmation we receive from his visit to Berlin. The citizens of the world don't vote, of course. But keep in mind that the decisions America makes affect how the rest of the world views it. The presidential election is the most-watched in the world--a cynic might say that's because it's an election in a major country that Americans actually pay attention to--and what Americans decide do affect us all, perhaps more than any other country. The saying in global economics is that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. By extension, now, you could put the 27 countries of the European Union in that same sickbay. And it seems almost certain that eight years of disastrous U.S. economic policy is about to put the UK into a recession, if it isn't already there.

Obama accepts his party's nomination tonight. It's a watershed moment in American politics. I could be more excited about it if I didn't have a bad feeling about November.