Barack Obama's victory in the U.S. presidential election Wednesday (KST) is just the beginning of a new history he should keep making.
The situations facing America and the world today were too grave and epochal to allow the ``Bradley effect" of racist voting treachery to wedge itself in this most crucial election since World War II, or the Great Depression.
``Change'' has been the biggest slogan of Senator Obama throughout his 22-month campaign, but nothing represented this call of the times better than the candidacy ― and now the election ― of this African-Asian-American politician in racial and cultural terms to the highest post of the world's No. 1 superpower.
Unfortunately for Obama and his supporters, he won't have much time to celebrate, as he should immediately prepare for the job, which an American journalist said they would not take even at the annual salary of ``$3 trillion.'' It will not be until Jan. 5 that President-elect Obama can drop the hyphenated part from his title, but he will be at the center of global attention until then.
One can hardly tell for now whether it would be good or bad for Obama, but the first black president in the 232 years of U.S. history will be taking over a country whose best days are almost over. The six-page letter to be sent from 27 European countries to new U.S. leader clearly points to the twilight of Pax Americana. Challenges will also come from elsewhere, as shown by China's recent proposal to reconsider the U.S. dollar as the world's key currency.
How Obama copes with the new competition for global hegemony will redraw the global political map and rewrite the rules of the game. What the Europeans' letter calls for is clear: They will no longer play second fiddle to U.S. unilateralism and share power with Washington. Western democracy, largely under U.S. leadership, has led the world to peace and prosperity in the 20th century by triumphing over fascism and communism. The 9/11 attack was both the cause and result of new conflicts ― cultural and religious ― which the current U.S. administration has failed to properly deal with, plunging both America and the rest of the world into painful, unnecessary chaos and insecurity.
We hope the new American government first resorts to dialogue and cooperation in dealing with not just its allies but also its adversaries, whether the issue is the war against terrorism or nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The administration of George W. Bush has demonstrated that fighting one fundamentalism with another fundamentalism does not work.
More immediate will be salvaging the global economy from the current turmoil, another task requiring pulling the wisdom of not only industrial but industrializing countries. In the longer term, the United States is asked to take the lead in changing the global economy from the present fossil-fuel dependent, zero-sum game to a plus-sum, win-win economy by opening new scientific and technological frontiers, such as clean, renewable energy and bio revolution.
The new U.S. leader is often compared with Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who reportedly are his role models: The two presidents' reigns coincided the beginning and end of an era, in which Americans enjoyed most equitable income. We hope Obama reproduces the creative, progressive but at the same time more humanistic era not only in America but in the rest of the world as well.
Most of all, he should do all he can and with the help of all Americans to ensure his presidency does not end up as just a four-year experiment but open another era of global peace and prosperity.