Welcome Back, America

My Sunday Times colleague, Sarah Baxter, says what a lot of right-leaning non-Americans feel:

Feizel Mamdoo, my brother-in-law, texted me from Johannesburg: “You’d think South Africa was voting! There are all-night election parties here.” Feizel and I haven’t always agreed about politics recently. He thought President George W Bush was a fool and a bully; I thought it was worth trying to make America safer by bringing democracy to some of the world’s most wretched tyrannies. I believe that America is a remarkable force for good. Obama’s achievement is that a world that has been blinkered by Bush Derangement Syndrome can again see America for what it actually is.