Obama: The Muslim World's Candidate

Egypt is the latest foreign spot where US journalists are finding support for the candidacy of Barack Obama, with Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times, finding "Egyptians are amazed, excited, and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage." Win or not, the Democrat's success "has done more to improve America’s image abroad … than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort."

Obama's charge "revives America’s revolutionary 'brand' overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned," Friedman finds in a culture where "the past always buries the future, not the other way around." Egypt will still have issues with the US in 2009, but Obama's pending nomination has "reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings." (More Barack Obama stories.)