If you get to vote in the elections next Tuesday (and remember that about 6.3 billion of us get no say in choosing the guy who will decide who gets bombed next), please vote for Obama. Not just because the Clintons already got to run the world for two terms. Not because the Clintons are willing to do anything for political gain, including telling Latino Americans to not vote to "a black candidate." But because the US has f**cked up way too much in the recent years and it would take a noticeable public U-turn for the US to regain any sort of moral authority. And the world needs United States with moral authority.
You might ask: why do I care. I don't have to put Canadian flag on my backpack when I travel around the world. (Of course, there are countries that hate Russia too, but that's a different story.) The reason is that while I am quite critical of many things in the US, I think many countries in the world need change more than US does, and Russia is one of them. Some years ago, one could point to something in Russia and say: "We've got to do it differently." We should have fair elections like in the United States. We should give people fair trial like in the United States. We should treat people of different races as equals, like in the United States. We need more transparency in the government, like in the US. Everyone knew that this image of the US was a bit of an idealization, but the US didn't go out of its way to show the world how silly it is to idealize it. Then came Rwanda, Monica and the war in Yugoslavia. Then Iraq, then Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Right now, to criticize something in Russia and point to the US as an example of how it could be done better is to make an utter fool out of oneself.
I think the world needs a bit more idealism, and this idealism needs to start in the US, as Europe is just a bit too cowardly and self-centered. US needs a president that would not just pledge to make less idiotic mistakes while bombing other countries and to lie more coherently to the UN. US needs a president that could say that US got problems and will be working to fix them and gain moral authority that could help make the world a better place.