Americans certainly weren’t alone in their eagerness to see George Bush pack his bags for Texas. Bush got a farewell lashing in editorial sections around the globe this week, while President Obama was welcomed by adoring front-page headlines. The cover of London’s The Daily Telegraph even offered a “Free Barack Obama DVD.”
As Hendrik Hertzberg speculates, Obama owes some of his soaring popularity among Americans–a recent poll puts his approval rating at eighty-two percent–to their equally robust distaste for Bush. The same could safely be assumed about worldwide esteem for Obama, but as Gary Younge points out in The Nation, global excitement about the recent election goes much deeper, particularly when you consider race.
“For most of the last century,” Younge writes,