Theodore Dalrymple writes in Planet Obama that the current pro-Obama “Global euphoria is better than the disrepute of the Bush years, but so far our new president’s appeal is entirely symbolic.”

“Not since the destruction of the Twin Towers has there been dancing in the streets anywhere on the planet to celebrate events in America.”

He reports:

“In Delhi, Indians kissed Obama’s photo.”

“Parties spilled into the Kenyan streets.”

“In Britain, the newspapers were beside themselves with joy.”

“The Daily Mirror, a tabloid with a circulation of 3 million, ran a photo of the president-elect with a single large word to accompany it: BELIEVE.”

“A group of 8,000 Bedouin living in Galilee gleefully claimed Obama as a relative, thanks to his resemblance to a Kenyan who had worked in British-mandated Palestine in the 1930s.”

“After his election, the German tabloid Bild carried the headline ‘Messiah Obama,’ and though one might have thought that Germans, of all people, would have had enough of political messiahs, the characterization was a compliment.”

Writes Dalrymple: “That a man who came from as inauspicious a beginning as Obama’s could be elected president of the United States has demonstrated to millions around the globe that the idea of America as the land of opportunity is not mere mythology, and that whatever its faults, the U.S. political system is an extremely open one. The 21st-century version of From Log Cabin to White House is now From Food Stamps to White House.”

But Dalrymple says that even into Obama’s charmed and charming life, some rain must fall:

“For all his transcendent appeal, Obama cannot overcome the harsh realities of a troubled world. He inherits two wars, from one of which, Iraq, he has promised swiftly to extricate America, the other of which, Afghanistan, he has promised to win by expanding the effort.  ... When I looked at Obama shortly after the election, with his economic advisers behind him, I had a powerful sense of looking at a Politburo: gray-faced old men, tried and tested — which is not quite the same as successful, of course, except in the most careerist terms.”

And then he pours rain on the parade:

“Britain has seen the Obama effect before. In 1997, a fresh-faced politician called Anthony Blair, promising the sun, the moon, and the stars, spoke with a passionate intensity that was somewhat lacking in detail and was elected to office in the land. ...

“Within a short time, this former unilateral-disarmer had proved himself the most belligerent and bellicose leader of Britain in recent times, willing to attack anyone as long as the victim couldn’t fight back.”

He concludes: “For now, Obama’s election has restored American prestige. ... [But] Americans no less than the rest of the world have reason to be skeptical.”

— Tom Hoopes