The Politics of the Bottom Up Go Global

I caught some of his townhall from Strasbourg this morning - carried live on CNN and MSNBC but not Fox of course - and our President was simply amazing.  He was good as I've ever seen him, connecting with the audience, offering complex thoughtful answers to tough challenges.   And Barack seemed to be happy to be in front of people rather than as he said stuck in hotel rooms.  The crowd was wildly excited, applauding him in ways few politicians ever hear.  In many ways this event is how our President best demonstrates his power, and the power of the American ideal.  For any European watching and wondering whether it is a new day, they can only have concluded that is a new day indeed. 

It was an inspiring way to start the day, and I was, for the entire time I watched, as deeply proud of being an American as I have been in many many years.

And it feels like on this trip our young, new President has begun the transformation from President of the United States to the paramount leader of the world's peoples.   His ability to find common ground, to talk of our common aspirations, to make it clear that we are all in this together, is a message, delivered by this particular messenger, which the people of the world are very ready to hear.

If as Fareed Zakaria has argued, the defining geopolitical event of this era is the "rise of the rest," and as Brzezinski has argued rising standards of living throughout the world are creating a "global political awakening," what we may have seen today is the first global leader of this new rising era to emerge; one who can speak in universal themes; one who can through modern media speak directly to these aspiring people - more numerous and in more nations than any time in all of human history - of the world, transcending faction, race and nation, speaking of our universal common aspirations as people no matter where they live.  The ability for this particular man, at this particular moment in history, to lay out such a convincing case for the universal dignity and common aspiration of all men and women across the world is allowing to speak directly to this global political awakening, and emerge as the leader not of the nations of the world, but much more importantly, its people. 

The politics of the bottom-up go global.