If tomorrow's election were to be decided by a worldwide vote, Barack Obama would win by a landslide. In Egypt, though, he would only win by a plurality.
A poll of world opinion conducted by the BBC News World Service in September found that people across the world preferred Obama to McCain by a 4-to-1 margin. The strongest supporters of Obama were in Kenya, Italy and France, where nearly 70 percent or more of respondents said they would prefer the Democratic nominee to be elected president.
But in Egypt only 26 percent of those polled said they supported Obama, with 61 percent saying they didn't prefer either candidate. A similar phenomenon occurred in Russia, India and Turkey. In these countries, the majority response toward the result of the U.S. election was apathy-not approval or disapproval.
These numbers take on greater significance with the fact that it was in these countries where respondents said that an Obama presidency would not positively impact U.S. foreign relations with the world. Most Egyptians-36 percent-said they thought things would remain the same.
The apathy that these numbers indicate refutes what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claim in his June column, "Obama on the Nile," that many Egyptians were fervent Obama supporters:
"[Egyptians] don't really understand Obama's family tree, but what they do know is that if America-despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11-were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name "Hussein," it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations."
The problem is that, contrary to the results of Friedman's anecdotal interviews, most Egyptians do not think electing Obama would be some sort of seminal moment for relations the United States and the Middle East. In fact, it was in three predominantly Muslim countries-Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon-that respondents to the BBC poll were the most likely to claim that U.S. relations with the world would remain the same or would get worse.
To be clear, though, among the 22 countries sampled only Turkey and Singapore thought a McCain presidency would be better for U.S. relations with the world than an Obama one.
Friedman's column is important because it belies the common belief that electing Obama would be enough to reverse years' worth of anger, resentment and frustration engendered by the misguided policies of the Bush administration across the region.
An Egyptian blogger who calls himself "The Skeptic" anticipated many of the findings of the BBC poll when he said Friedman omitted the overwhelmingly cynical response he had heard from Egyptians on the topic of the presidential election.
But Friedman did get one thing right. Egyptians are intrigued by the prospect of the U.S. electing a non-white president. 65 percent of Egyptians say that the election of Obama-the biracial son of an immigrant father-would change their perception of the U.S. for the better.
And what's interesting is that the essential element of Obama's unique identity is his race, and not his supposedly Muslim roots via his paternal grandfather. In Lebanon and Turkey-both majority Muslim countries, only 34 and 19 percent respectively said there impression of the U.S would be changed for the better if Obama were elected. Egypt, a country with people whose complex racial politics defy the white-black binary often adopted in American, was the exception.
So, even if Egyptians aren't optimistic that an Obama presidency would change U.S. foreign policy, it could go a long way toward reestablishing their faith in the American ideal of equality of opportunity for any qualified person regardless of their background.
In Friedman's words, an Obama victory would revive "America's revolutionary 'brand' overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned."
One man can't be a panacea for America's foreign policy woes, but he could give America that chance for a new beginning in the region, even if the majority of Egyptians are skeptical that such a change will happen.
Yousef AbuGharbieh is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
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