Dear America, Thank you. Given the limited choices, the narrow range of political possibilities, and all that, I figure you done pretty good. Nobody’s ideal, but in a choice between jumping deeper into a pit or, well, a few positive changes, I figure you chose the latter. And at the very least, you kept Alzheimer’s McCain out, and Prayin’ Palin and the Bibliomaniacs from getting a heart attack away from the Presidency. Your countrymen abroad, as well as my Korean students, seem overall quite pleased. Or relieved. Or both. Actually, so does much of the planet. So… now what?

Regular commenter Val passed on this cool online experiment. It’s a site where non-Americans could vote for whomever they’d vote for if they were American today. I meant to post this earlier, but I forgot, and now the voting is ended. The results, though, are interesting in their overwhelming majority-ness. Hmm. One wonders whether conservativism in any government is bound to appeal only to people within that nation, while the liberal government (for a definition of “liberal” relative to the given state, that is) in a given nation is likelier to have appeal internationally? (For example, many Westerners I know …