Newspaper columnists in Berlin are calling Obama the “new John F Kennedy.”
France views a democratic victory as the end of a neo-conservative foreign policy agenda.
America’s Asian trading partners worry that the Democrats will have stricter environmental regulations.
Senegal hopes that next president will be more open to immigration and less hostile to Islam.
These and more are associations that many countries have with the presidential candidates and the democratic process in general, as reported in a recent New York Times article. In India and Japan, for example, there is a belief that the process will restore American honor and inspire hope. Others, such as Venezuela and the Philippines, believe there will be no difference.
Simon Anholt, author of Brand America, argues in his Place Blog that the better candidate has little to do with race, gender, or even politics, and more to do with how masculine or feminine the candidate is. He suggests that Obama has some feminine characteristics, "culturally sensitive, caring, gentle, and considerate," while Clinton is "driven, forceful and aggressive," and that the "excess of political testosterone" is a primary source of America's image problem.
Whatever the case, the attention is a tremendous opportunity for voters to change international perceptions of Americans and America.
Is resonance with an international audience an important presidential characteristic for you? And if so, what characteristics should the ideal candidate represent?
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