Everyone at my school was celebrating this afternoon, because word had filtered through that Obama was about to win the election. They were still counting at that time, and at least half the states hadn’t yet been called, but based on projections Obama had twice as many electoral college votes as McCain. Twice as many. He appeared to have the presidency in the bag — as, we discovered later that evening, he did. Even before waiting that long, my year level got into the celebratory mood, running and crying, “Have you heard? Obama’s gonna be the president! The black guy’s gonna be the president!”

From next January, the US will have its first-ever black president. This is undoubtedly a historic moment for the US. They’ve come a long way from segregation, and before that, from slavery. It’s a big symbolic event. I’m not even sure how to describe it. I suppose it’s a sign of reconciliation, in a way. African Americans were long mistreated, or regarded as inferior, to white Americans, but now everyone is equal. And not only that, but everyone accepts that everyone is equal, and that there is no problem in electing an African American to be the president.

Awe-inspiring as this is, race is not the reason I was supporting Obama. I was supporting Obama because the US President is also effectively the leader of the world, and Obama seems far better suited to that role than McCain does. Even by himself, McCain’s foreign policy was godawful. Sarah Palin really didn’t help. Anyone who sings, “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” automatically disqualifies themselves as an eligible president. Or, well, they should.

Obama’s foreign policy seemed to centre around the principles of negotiating with America’s enemies. He backed down on this a little, I think, but negotiating with America’s enemies is a great idea. Don’t alienate these people, because that only makes them hate you! Help these people, hear out their concerns, be willing to compromise on some things. If one state is fair and helpful, other states tend to like it, support it, sympathise with it. The US could wield soft power a lot more effectively, I feel.

Obama is obviously not as gung-ho about the whole “being nice to people” thing as I am. He advocates raids on Pakistani territory despite that being a contravention of international law, and a great way to piss off Pakistanis to boot. If I recall correctly, he backed down on his intention to negotiate with Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. Obviously, if he starts being too nice to “America’s enemies” he’s going to lose the support of the people at home, and in a democracy he can’t do that if he wants to keep his job.

But oh, how the world could benefit if he did.