It was three days before the new year in late 2006, and I was eating a burger with the traveler and writer Paul Theroux on Oahu's North Shore. Beside us in the rickety little shack was a quintessentially Hawaiian group of Chinese Americans, African Americans, semi-Southeast Asians and kids who could have been any or all of the above, waiting for the dad in the group to bring over their avocado burgers from the counter. It took Paul and me a few seconds to realize that the dad in question - who looked like a skinny teenager - was, in fact, the freshman Senator from Illinois, who was expected to enter the presidential race in the next week or two.

We couldn't help breaking in on his private moment to say hello, and Barack Obama, intruded upon in a place he'd probably come to get away from people like us, could not have been more friendly and engaged; we felt we could have talked burgers - and places and books - with him all day. But you expect that of a politician, whose livelihood depends on winning hearts. The more remarkable thing, we both felt, was that this sparkling stranger was so much like the kind of people we meet in Paris, in Hong Kong, in the Middle East: difficult to place and connected to everywhere. Like the air of his home island (not really Eastern or Western, but a vibrant mingling of the two), he spoke for the dawning global melting pot of today.

Everywhere I've been this year - from Jerusalem to Japan to Colombia to Italy and back again - I've heard people essentially say that America is an overweight, white plutocrat who is not only out of touch with the world but also shows no signs of wanting to grow closer to it. This is as unfair as any image - contradicted at every moment by the kindness and curiosity of many Americans - but it remains a potent one in a world where people communicate more with images than ideas and assumptions travel faster than truths. The best way to begin to correct it is to show the world a leader who can't really say how much he's African or Asian or American or just a product of their mixing in Hawaii. The point is not just that Obama will bring globalism to America; in his name, his face and his issues, he'll bring America back to the globe.

Excerpt from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2008110...inhawaii/print