"Barack is the new black"

Jenn brought something home with her from Iceland especially for me: a free newspaper with Barack Obama on the cover with the headline above splashed above... there was a tagline at the bottom saying:

Barack Obama's call for change resonates as deeply in Europe as it does in the U.S. THe new leader of the free world is seen as a unifying symbol, capable of rebuilding the bridges that the Bush administration burned down in the last eight years. Hope has been restored.

Well, I was intrigued. I got home tonight and started reading the article, written by an American, no doubt. He starts the article by relating American literature to America's place in the world. It, like American literature, is described by the author like this:

To be American as long as I've been alive has been to be at the top of a fading, maniacal empire, and to have been hyper-conscious of it.

My husband says all the time that one of his number one reasons for supporting Obama is to help us regain respect in the world, and I tend to agree. I remember going to Paris and Amsterdam in 2004 (or 2005?) to visit a friend studying abroad and I was taken back by all the American-haters, more specifically, Bush-haters, out there.
I don't really have much else to say about the article... I don't think one man can truly "save" us and do as much as he's being built up to be able to do, but wouldn't it be nice?