And a lot of people hopped up on high doses of hope will become disillusioned when they find that America still has an American foreign policy, albeit shifted left, and not a European foreign policy.
But this isn't to say that there won't be an effect abroad that will help us:
"I can't believe those two little girls with hair like mine will be in the White House," said 31-year-old Carolina Iootty Dias, putting her hand to her head, tears in her eyes as she watched the screen.
Black Brazilians such as Dias, a human rights worker, celebrated Obama's election as giving hope worldwide. But the country that prides itself on racial mixing and tolerance is also being forced to take a reality check.
Though half of Brazil's 190 million people are black — the world's largest black population outside Nigeria — power remains firmly in the hands of whites. The country has few blacks in top political positions, and government studies consistently show blacks in Brazil earn half as much as whites.
"This Brazilian hypocrisy that says racism does not exist is one of the things that keeps the nation from advancing," said Stepan Nercessian, an actor and Rio de Janeiro city councilman, who is white.
Much of the world easily ignored our progress in racial issues while ignoring their own lack of progress in racial, religious, or ethnic minority issues.
I noted shortly after the election that I'd rather have Obama than some run-of-the-mill liberal president since with the former we at least get some advantage overseas on the racial issue. Now we are seeing fans of America created abroad who will be less likely to reflexively condemn us when we act.
This base of good will for Obama will be quite the dilemma for the social anti-Americans abroad, those who are the elites in government, education, and business who claim to hate us in polls but who limit their "hatred" to poller responses and sending 5 Euros to Hamas every year.
