The Obama Factor

Americans have long suffered from a (deservedly) negative image abroad. The fat, ignorant, loud American complaining about the lack of Wendy's in Paris is a tough caricature to overcome. However over the past eight years George W. Bush has successfully helped Americans get beyond this stereotype. The rest of the world became so focused on the destructive policies our government chose to pursue that they forgot all about their previous reasons to revile us.

During the course of previous travels, while not universally shunned, I definitely left the assumption of my Canadian citizenship uncorrected (People never wanted to offend Canadians by asking if they were American). As I have mentioned before, the Obama election and inauguration gets a lot of play in this part of the world. And one tangible effect of the Obama administration so far is that it's a lot easier to tell the truth about the color of my passport.

Especially during the election and around the inauguration pretty much every person's response to the "Where are you from?" reply was "Obama!" or "Obamaland", "Obamacountry" or some other corruption of the name of the hour. And the positive reactions are not just from locals. Even my fellow travelers (mostly European) were caught up in Obama fever. The fervor has died down a little, but I'll be in Kenya soon and I know they are proud of their native grandson..

Inevitably the question I get nowadays is, "How's he doing?" People even ask me this knowing full well that I haven't set foot in the good ol' U.S. of A. since September. I generally try to lower people's expectations and remind them that he is still a politician after all. However, amazingly despite all of the goodwill he is generating, very few people have told me they expect him to start handing out visas. The American presidency is a largely symbolic position, and in this respect President Obama is already an unequivocal success.

Now that I am headed home soon, he'll have to start working on the economy.