It’s 3am late Tuesday night – or VERY early Wednesday morning and I’m watching the Elections for the next President of the United States of America. It’s an exciting time.
Switching among CNN International, BBC World News, France 24 (English version), Fox News, TVE (national television station in Spain) and even Al Jazeera (English version) is giving me a very broad image of the international reporting of these all-important elections. Thank goodness for satellite dishes!
All channels report the elections to be “of World Importance”, and “The World is Watching”. I guess the world really does care what happens!
Not surprisingly, these aforementioned big television news media outlets are covering the elections without interruption but TVE here in Spain is now doing the same. Now that’s impressive! Of course it’s all in Spanish but what’s interesting is the perspective they and other international news channels provide us. Even Jerome Socolovsky, my favorite National Public Radio (“NPR” in the United States) correspondent, is on the TVE panel of election experts analyzing the ongoing developments. Cool!
Today I saw a number of Spanish television stations interviewing people on the street, asking them if they were interested in today’s US Presidential Elections. To my surprise, nearly everyone said that YES, they were VERY interested in the outcome of the elections. When asked which candidate they wanted to win, about 90% said they hoped Barack Obama would win. The other 10% could care less. No one mentioned John McCain’s name.
It won’t be long until the USA has a new President Elect – but that President won’t start serving his country as America’s Commander in Chief until January 20th, 2009.
There was an organized US Elections Party tonight (errrr.. last night) at 11pm at the Circulo de Bellas Artes but I couldn’t imagine myself A) dragging myself downtown at that hour, B) paying 20 Euros entry and then extra for drinks/food (or maybe that was included? doubt it), and C) forcing myself to stay awake in the company of strangers until 6am.
Regardless of who wins the Presidency, it’ll (hopefully help to) re-establish the reputation of the United States in the world’s eyes. No matter what anyone says we have to keep lines of communication open and improve diplomacy to get along better with the world’s nations, our neighbors.
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