Why they love him, continued

A dear friend of mine has a spouse who works at Focus on the Family. After seeing my post today about why the world loves Obama, she lamented, "It is still sad to me that it is personality and image that wins people over rather than what they stand for or what they promise to do."

My response was, "Most of the people around the world do support him because of what he stands for and what he promises to do."

The people in England and Germany and Dubai and Pakistan and Indonesia want a guy who stands for working with the international community instead of telling it what to do.

There's a story in Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Post-American World,* about how French prez Nicolas Sarkozy takes pride in being an unapologetic Bush administration supporter. Condi Rice asked him, "What can we do for you?" And he said, "Stop being so unpopular around the world. It's killing the ability of people like me to work with you."

So the world wants a guy who will bring a different approach, as do apparently most of the American voters. The question is whether American conservatives in 2008 represent a political minority now in terms of what they expect a person to stand for.

*One disappointed person wrote to Colin Powell after his Obama endorsement, warning him that Obama is a Muslim who has been reading a book on the death of America by another Muslim. It turned out to be this book by Zakaria. It's a very telling sign of the panicked way in which American conservatives are reading the current state of affairs.