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| Day 4 of 78
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What else happened today
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Headlines from November 8, 2008:
(External links might become inactive over time)
November 5, 2008, in the LA Times
In country after country, elation over Obama's victory was palpable, the hunger for a change of American leadership as strong outside the U.S. as in it. And there was wonderment that, in the world's most powerful democracy, a man with African roots and the middle name Hussein, an upstart fighter who took on political heavyweights, could capture the highest office in the land.
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Yet though many have denounced U.S. power and unilateralism, they also seemed intent on putting the country back on a pedestal, and they fixed on Obama as their hope. Polls consistently showed that, if the rest of the world could vote, the Illinois Democrat would win not by a landslide, but an avalanche.
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"There's a feeling of hope that things will be right in America," Habib said. "Obama can make you once again respect the U.S. for its values and democracy and all those things we had forgotten about over the last eight years."
No one yet knows what Obama's foreign policy will look like, and the celebratory mood over his triumph in many places was tempered by questions about his plans for U.S. troops in Iraq, his role in Middle East peace talks and his commitment to free trade, among other issues.
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Those inspired by Obama's origins and accomplishments include French political activist Patrick Lozes, the son of an immigrant from the African nation of Benin.
"This election is going to improve the image the U.S.A. has in our neighborhoods," Lozes said of France's heavily Muslim working-class enclaves. [My bold] "The American dream comes back to life."
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A similar hope lives in Mexico, where former Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaņeda wrote in Wednesday's Reforma newspaper: "Obama won, the map of the United States was transformed and for Mexico an extraordinary opportunity has opened . . . because it will be infinitely simpler to be a neighbor, partner and friend of the United States with Obama." [My bold]
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