The world’s mind is made up. Will the U.S. agree?

In the U.S., the presidential candidates are retooling their campaigns for the fall, thinking about vice presidential choices and getting ready for their conventions. Most of the real campaigning lies ahead.

If the rest of the world could vote though, the election would already be over, and Barack Obama would have won by a landslide.

That is the clear conclusion from dozens of interviews and a close reading of polls from around the world. The overwhelmingly dominant view is that Obama will win, and that his victory will bring dramatic, positive change to U.S. domestic and foreign policies.

That obviously means that many are projecting their hopes and expectations onto Obama, a politician few of them knew existed only months ago. Now they say they will be profoundly disappointed if John McCain wins. But they might be just as disappointed if Obama fails to deliver the kind of radical change they think America needs.

The point is that—despite all the polls and news stories “proving” that the world is angry at America—the real story might be that the rest of the globe simply expects more from us than we have delivered over the past eight years. Even the skeptics recognize that, as British lawyer Musa Okwonga told FLYP, “the American presidency is still the most important job in the world.”

Anders Wijkman, a Swedish member of the European Parliament, summarized what much of the world is saying: “I think Obama represents what the world needs right now. McCain would be very much more of the same, and we don’t need much more of the same.”

World Views: with our interactive graphic, see how countries all over the world view both Obama and McCain, and listen to Richard Wike, associate director of the Pew Institute, discuss the survey results.Reading the poll numbers

John McCain, whose campaign has emphasized his foreign policy credentials, has already traveled this year to Europe, Canada, Colombia and Mexico. While those trips might reinforce one of his core campaign messages for the American electorate, they have done little to improve his image outside of the country. Obama is wildly popular around the world, and beats McCain in polls taken virtually everywhere.

The Pew Global Attitudes Survey (PDF) in April reported that Obama was the favored candidate in all of the 23 foreign countries surveyed, from Britain and France to Russia and China, India and Brazil to Nigeria and Lebanon. (The 24th country in the Global Attitudes Survey was the U.S.) The survey also found considerable interest in the race. At least half of those surveyed in Japan, Germany, Australia, Jordan and Britain said they are following the election closely, with at least one-third following closely in another eight countries.

In May, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that those they surveyed preferred Obama to McCain by an average of 52 percentage points in Britain, France, Italy and Germany. Only in Russia was Obama’s margin narrow: 31 percent said they would vote for Obama, while “neither” came in second (28 percent) and McCain placed third (24 percent).

Canadians recently told pollsters they would rather vote for Obama than for any of their own political leaders. In Mexico, McCain tallied only 7 percent support in a poll conducted by Reforma, Mexico City’s leading daily newspaper.

In early June, a poll of 22 countries released by Al Jazeera English Network showed that 55 percent of those who were following the U.S. election favored Obama, compared to 31 percent for Hillary Clinton (who at the time of the poll was still in the race) and a meager 14 percent for McCain.

McCain’s best countries were China and Turkey, but Obama out-polled him by a factor of two in China and by a factor of three in Turkey.

IS THE WORLD BEING FAIR TO JOHN MCCAIN?

Despite McCain’s long political career, people outside the U.S. feel they know much less about him than about Obama. What little they think they know tends to reflect their views about President Bush or Republicans in general, more than their knowledge about the senator from Arizona.

Ingrid Srinath from India put it succinctly: “I think McCain is really Bush Lite.” Kullawee Pongpattanajit, 30, a Thai woman, told FLYP that “if McCain became the president, I don’t think he would be much different from Bush. If people want to see changes in America they should vote for Obama.”

For some, concerns about McCain run deeper than that. Hector Castillo, a Mexican sociologist, worries that “the military and armed conflicts are a big business for Republicans.” Brazilian Mirian Vilela thinks Republican foreign policy “fails to engage the world in a tolerant, inclusive way.”

Of course, McCain has supporters outside the country, and Obama has his share of doubters. Sen. McCain is a known quantity to at least some of the political elite. That counts with potential adversaries like China and Russia, where Obama’s freshness inspires skepticism, even if McCain’s throwback Cold War rhetoric is unsettling.

For example, some Chinese analysts worry that Obama would favor Africa over Asia, simply because of his race. They are concerned as well that his emphasis on human rights could interfere with the bilateral relationship, at least until Obama gains experience.

There are also those who think any American president will be hostile to their interests, including many in Russia, a country where 56 percent of those polled recently told the Telegraph that the U.S. is a source of evil in the world.

Many in the Arab and Muslim world seem to share that view. Mohammed Adnan, a Pakistani bookseller, summarized his—and possibly their—feelings: “It does not make a difference who comes to power because neither one of them is Muslim. How can two non-Muslims be good for a Muslim country?”

For his partisans, Obama represents an agent of change, if only because he is so plainly different in policy and personality from previous American leaders. Those drawn to McCain say that their support is derived from specific aspects of his platform that mesh well with their national interests.

In other words, for some, if Obama is the candidate of the heart and soul, McCain is the candidate of the mind.

One exception is Tran Trong Duyet, who ran the prison where McCain spent more than five years after his airplane was shot down during the Vietnam War. He told the BBC that “McCain is my friend. If I was American, I would vote for him.” That is one vote McCain would probably prefer not to register. ”
Fingers on the Pulse: journalists from around the world—from China to Brazil—give their opinions of the unfolding U.S. election in video interviews.WELCOME TO OBAMAMANIA

A Stockholm bus driver, on his daily run from Fridhemsplan to Stora Essingen, entertains his passengers by playing Obama’s Philadelphia race speech over the bus’s internal loudspeaker.

The Jamaican reggae singer CoCoa Tea scores a hit in Kenya, singing “Well this is not about class, not about race or creed/Make no mistake it’s the changes/Where are all the people that need, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama.”

French rappers declare, “O Barack Obama, Tu veux casser la baraque/Du Maroc à l’Amérique, De l’Irak à Bamako/Tu n’as pas la baraka au bas mot/Car tu te frottes à la frite, Mc Cain.” (That loosely translates as, “Oh Barack Obama, you want to break the mold; from Morocco to America, Iraq to Bamako. McCain, you won’t have the luxury of the last word because you are messing with the best.”)

And the Mighty Sparrow from Trinidad sings, “Barack! Barack! He is fighting for openness and honesty in government. Barack—is doggedly defiant, phenomenal strength and wisdom beyond comment.”

For their part, residents of Obama, Japan—a small fishing village in Fukui prefecture—can now buy Obama hamburgers and chopsticks with the candidate’s image to express their support for the first American presidential candidate to share the name of a Japanese town.

What do these Obamamaniacs think they see in him?

First, the fact that Obama is black has had a profound impact in countries around the world. Patrick Devedjian, the head of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right political party, called Obama’s candidacy “a very beautiful image of America, the image of a candidate who transcends race.” Furthermore, many recognize that—even if he loses—the fact of Obama’s candidacy says something positive about how the country has changed during the last 40 years.

Second, many see Obama as the anti-Bush—and McCain as the next Bush. With the president’s global poll ratings remaining even lower than his domestic ratings, that characterization almost automatically produces substantial support abroad.

Third, non-Americans want a U.S. president with a broad international perspective, which they think Obama has in part because of his childhood years in Indonesia and his Kenyan grandmother.

For example, Chaiwat Thirapantu, a Thai businessman, says that “the U.S. is no longer the center of the world.” He believes that Obama would deal better with that reality than McCain because of his family background.

Fourth, the world wants an America that is a positive in the global equation. Many dismiss McCain because of his support for the war in Iraq, which is even more unpopular abroad than at home. And they invest Obama with the youthful promise of John F. Kennedy, the moral passion of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the boundless energy of Bill Clinton (but without the moral ambiguity of either Kennedy or Clinton).

That is a tall order. “There’s such a huge burden on him to solve all the problems of the world,” says Subhas Argawal, an Indian journalist. “The expectations are falsely exaggerated.”

Listen to four songs, written and performed by musicians around the world, that praise ObamaWAITING FOR THE ELECTION

At least some outside the U.S. think that they deserve a vote in the election, because of the impact the U.S. president has around the world. They say they are dealing with the consequences of U.S. policies, from the war in Iraq to biofuel subsidies to the subprime mortgage crisis. And many think that few American voters consider the international repercussions of their presidential choice.

Since we are not about to extend suffrage to billions around the globe, all those voices without votes will have to wait until America’s ballots are counted in November. What if McCain wins, despite global hopes and preferences?

Today, the reactions range from the devastated to the resigned: “it would confirm some of the worries I have about democracy;” “it would tell me that Americans are afraid;” and “the world, and not just the U.S., would be missing a chance to do something better.” Or, as Aart von Veller, a young Dutch journalist put it, “we will be doomed.”

In our fully interactive video page, listen to the views of sixteen foreigners from around the globe, all of whom FLYP met up with in Sweden.And, don’t forget to cast your vote on whether or not you’ll consider international opinion when casting your ballot in November.