Does the 2008 election augment America’s soft power?

There's been a lot of talk over the past year two years four years since Operation Iraqi Freedom about the erosion in America's "soft power" resources. There's also been a lot of talk about how some of the candidates for the 2008 election might, because of their personal attributes or personal history, automatically boost our soft power. In the Washington Post, however, Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan implicitly raise an intriguing possibility -- the topsy-turvy nature of the election campaign itself could improve America's image abroad: John Mbugua, 56, a taxi driver in Mombasa, Kenya, woke himself at 3 a.m. the day of the Iowa caucuses and flipped on CNN. He said he watched for hours, not understanding precisely what or where Iowa was but thrilled about the victory of Barack Obama, the first U.S. presidential contender with Kenyan roots. "I have never been interested in the elections before," Mbugua, who also got up at 4 a.m. to watch the New Hampshire primary results, said in a telephone interview. "But now everybody is watching. Everybody feels that Kenya has a stake in the outcome of the U.S. election." From Mombasa's sandy shores on the Indian Ocean to the hot tubs of Reykjavik, Iceland, the U.S. primary elections are creating unprecedented interest and excitement in a global audience that normally doesn't tune in until the general election in November. This year's wide-open primary season, filled with big personalities and dramatic story lines, has created an eager global audience that suddenly knows its Hillary from its Huckabee. "It's a great spectacle, and people are avidly devouring it," said Jeremy O'Grady, editor in chief of the Week, a British magazine. O'Grady said major British newspapers this week alone have devoted more than 87 pages to news of the U.S. primaries, including 22 front-page stories -- exceptionally intense coverage of a foreign news event. More than 700 correspondents from 50 countries covered the Iowa and New Hampshire events. A popular BBC radio program, "World Have Your Say," devoted an hour this week to parsing how pollsters wrongly predicted that Obama, an Illinois senator, would win the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. The show attracted detailed and nuanced calls and text messages from Romania, South Africa, Liberia and other countries. About 1.5 million people visited the BBC Web page reporting the win by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) over Obama in New Hampshire, making it one of the most-read stories in months, a BBC spokesman said. "The candidates have more iconic status than usual," O'Grady said. "They are almost like superhero cartoons: the Mormon, the woman, the black, the millionaire, the war hero. . . . We do love a good show over here." I have mixed feelings about the global attention to our little campaign. On the one hand, the campaign rhetoric since the new year has been so banal that I can see it being offputting. The Cliff Notes version of the past two weeks of the campaign for the Democrats has been as follows: "Hope, change, real change, experience, change, likeability, false hope, change, fairy tale, change, even more change." For the Republicans: "Merry Christmas, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Happy New Year, Reagan, tax cuts, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan!" We're not talkng the Lincoln-Douglas debates here. On the other hand, there are ways in which the race has highlighted some positive qualities of the American system. Consider: 1) This might be the most competitive presidential election in modern history. No incumbent president or vice president is running. On the Democratic side, there are/were three candidates with viable shots at the nomination; On the GOP side, there are/were four. 2) Front-runners have fallen. On the Democratic side, Clnton and then Obama have been brought low by the shifts in voter sentiment. On the GOP side, it's been even more dramatic. McCain was the frontrunner, then Romney, then Giuliani, then Romney, Huckabee, and now McCain again. 3) Negative campaigning has not worked. Part of the explanation for Huckabee's rise has been the relentlessly upbeat quality of the campaign and the man. Mitt Romney, in contrast, has not gained much from going after either Huckabee or McCain. Obama's optimism on the campaign trail worked well for him, until women thought Hillary was being unfairly attacked and rallied behind her. I suspect, in South Carolina, that she will pay a price for her "false hope" line, not to mention Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" line. 4) From an international perspective, the cream is rising to the top. The three candidates who would likely generate the most excitement outside the United States are Clinton, Obama, and McCain, and they've done pretty well so far. Question to readers: will the campaign itself improve America's standing abroad?