Australia's response to the US election

Australia is a nation of Obama supporters. Like virtually every other country in the world, Australia was strongly pro-Obama in The Economist’s global electoral college. At 905 support for Obama, Australian support was even higher than that in South Africa, where Obama scored 89%.

Interest in the US election was very high indeed in Australia, with wall-to-wall coverage for weeks on end. For months, my colleagues and I had been sharing anti-Sarah Palin links and Tina Fey videos. Whether we were born in Australia, the UK or South Africa, we shared strong support for Obama and what he represented. Yesterday evening after the Melbourne Cup, a creative director, originally from the UK, told me how he was so excited about the possibility of a win for Obama that he could not sleep. This was epoch-defining, he said; the most important historical event in all of our lives for decades.

As it turned out, I was in a meeting with a client when the results came through. We were discussing how to market a message around unified communications and collaboration to IT and business decision-makers when the marketing manager interrupted and announced that the result had come through on her iPhone.

So much for the political views of those who work in Sydney. Opinions in the media were more diverse, with concerns cited about the fact that while John McCain had written an article for the Australian media, Obama had not. Clearly, Obama did not list the Antipodes as top of mind, a worrying thing for a nation that had followed the US dutifully into war in Iraq. (And a likely explanation for McCain’s lack of appeal here.)

The traditionally more liberal (in the American sense, though not necessarily the Australian sense) Sydney Morning Herald was pro-Obama, as were its readers. Political editor Peter Hartcher wrote about how an Obama victory would demonstrate that no nation could stop a race.

In the same paper, however, conservative commentator Gerard Henderson criticised the Australian media for their pro-Obama bias. “It is difficult to recall any other election in a democratic society,” he wrote, “where the media has been so obviously supporting one side in a two-sided contest.” Henderson cited many examples of journalists in the Australian media who support the Democrats and dismissed this as “fashion”.

The Australian, the conservative broadsheet owned by Rupert Murdoch, primly refused to endorse either candidate on the grounds that to do so was inappropriate — somewhat ironic given that those two Bibles of free market capitalism, the Financial Times and The Economist, both endorsed Obama.

If the market is the mechanism that ultimately determines the value of all things, then the Obama victory was a positive move; both Asian and Australian stocks surged on the announcement. Kevin Rudd, who was also elected by voters wanting change — but lacks a smidgen of the charisma radiated by Obama — stated that Obama’s victory was the culmination of Martin Luther King’s dream.

I noticed, when checking Facebook, how many of my Facebook friends expressed hope for an Obama victory. It was comforting; a reassurance that I moved in the right sort of crowd. (Will anyone admit to being a Republican now?) So, in the same way, I am glad that Australians have done the right thing by throwing their collective weight, even symbolically, behind Obama. We are together in a coalition of the hopeful. Let us enjoy the glow.