dajafi wrote:
The "world opinion" consideration is not zero, but the truth is that America has too big of a market, too mighty a military, and too influential a culture for the world to give us a timeout, regardless of who's in charge. And I think McCain, while perhaps not as palatable to your average Frenchy or Deutchlander or Swede as Obama, is more than capable of winning over world opinion, all things being equal.
I think it is underestimated how much of an uphill battle McCain would face in doing so. While all of us have received great assistance in parsing the vast differences between McCain and Bush or your standard Republican, I don't think the populations of most foreign countries have been so fortunate. Obama, on other hand, stands out clearly as a change of direction. While I hardly see this converting any terrorists in training, I can see it being very valuable among our traditional democratic allies, whose leaders will find it much easier to come to agreement with the United States knowing that the leader is held in higher regard by their populations. I feel like currently it is difficult to arrive at even mutually beneficial agreements due to the acrimony felt toward Bush, and that it would take a long time for McCain to make this evaporate, and a much shorter time for Obama.
I respect both candidates, despite the efforts of their campaigns, particularly McCain's, to make me shed this respect. In considering two qualified candidates a difference such as this becomes more important. I can see how the consideration of this would prove greatly annoying to McCain supporters, since it basically relies on the facts that Obama is black and a Democrat. But I think in this situation these facts drawn on as a support for Obama's candidacy become substantive, rather than knee-jerk.
Needless to say (I think), this argument in his favor would mean nothing if I didn't think he was well-qualified to handle all other aspects of the presidency.
