There has of late been perplexed disbelief in some quarters at the joyous reaction of Europe, and in particular the European press, to the election of Barack Obama. There has also been resentment of Europe’s apparent “pious dismissal of the past decade of [the USA]’s history”.

Firstly, let’s not forget that it was Le Monde that proclaimed in September 2001 that, “We are all Americans now.” This from the newspaper of record of the one country in Europe to which America historically owes the most, a country that a bare two years after September 11 would be vilified as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

It is precisely because of who America is, and who she has been, that we Europeans have been so incredulous these past eight years. The election of Barack Hussein Obama is a return to the ‘shining city on the hill’ that America, for Europe, has always been. The fact that Obama is black, has a funny name, and is a progressive is just further testament to America’s enduring ability to realize it’s full potential; to stare down the regressive and fear-mongering elements that all proud nations have. To be able to shake off the fears and prejudice of uncertainty and ignorance. To rise above.

Americans believe their country to be exceptional, and to a certain extent it is. The American president is often referred to as ‘the leader of the free world,’ though tellingly mostly in the US itself. If you insist on taking on this mantle you have to actually carry it through. Walk the walk as they say. Who in their right minds opposes a treaty designed to tackle the universally accepted threat of climate change? Who would veto a bill that would provide the most basic of health coverage to children? Why is New Orleans still in ruins? Reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions? The suspension of habeas corpus? Guantanamo Bay? Abu Ghraib? Rendition? We all had a chuckle at George W. Bush trying to pronounce ‘nuclear’, but redefining torture as ‘enhanced interrogation’? This is not the America we all know and love.

Now obviously it’s not like you should be electing leaders based purely on whether Europe likes them or not. Nobody should tell you who you should elect -- because that would be telling people how they should run their country, and that’s just not right is it, er, America?

However, you should surely be electing the leaders who best embody the values and principles of ‘America’; the values that have endured and inspired so many nations for centuries. There’s a reason Obama beat out the formidable Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination: hope is a powerful force. The desire for something different, something better, that something at the end of the long dark tunnel. It is a motivating force, the same force that America has used and embodied for so much of the past century. That Obama won in a landslide electoral college victory in the general election speaks to that hope.

Somebody has likened the jubilation in Europe at Obama’s election to “the popular high school crowd who suddenly wants to befriend you for your new car”. The school analogy is not totally out of place, given that George ‘Dubya’ Bush is known not to play well with others. But if there were a school-based analogy to be made it would be more akin to a group welcoming back a core member, one who went off the rails for a while and hung out with the bad boys, dabbled in petty theft -- maybe even smoked some funny cigarettes -- until they realized that that just wasn’t who they were and returned to the fold. If, you know, we were doing school analogies.

There was recently an article in Foreign Affairs pondering the future of US-world relations, it related an anecdote about how John McCloy, US commissioner of a defeated Germany after World War II, attended the Opera in West Berlin some thirty years later, during the 1980s. On hearing of his presence the entire audience rose to it’s feet and applauded him for several minutes. In June 2008 that same Opera house, now in a unified Berlin, played Beethoven’s Fidelio, a “universal celebration of love and freedom”. The actors playing prisoners wore orange jumpsuits, those made famous by the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Can you imagine anyone in a Baghdad opera house in thirty years time applauding Paul Bremer? “Within a generation”, says the author of that article, Dominique Moisi, “the United States has moved from being a symbol of freedom to being a symbol of oppression.”

For Europe, America had always been the benchmark, the ever-reliable defender of freedom and promoter of progress: The Marshall Plan, The United Nations, NATO, The Dayton Accords, The Oslo Accords, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, The Non-Proliferation Treaty; all enterprises of common good, benefiting not only the United States, but also the rest of the world.

It’s not that we forgot who America is, or how awesome it is, nor do we discount the courage and hard work and vision it takes to be in a position of leadership; we were just waiting to see it there again. With the election of Barack Obama, America has reclaimed it’s rightful place at the head of the "tea-table."

Good to see you again America, it’s been a while.