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GAZA — From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.
Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.
“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.
Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”
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Results of our mock election at school (everyone was able to vote, including all staff, regardless of nationality)
A total of 451 votes were cast as follows
Obama 87.3%
McCain 7.1%
Other 2.9%
143 voters identified themselves as US citizens and voted as follows
Obama 86.0%
McCain 9.1%
Other 3.5%
271 voters identified themselves as non-US citizens and voted as follows
Obama 91.0%
McCain 5.5%
Other 2.2%
