Without getting too megalomaniacal, it’s fair to say that people still look to the US for leadership, among other things.  Katherine and I don’t get to see all the campaign ads you do (well, I watch McCain’s really bad ones on YouTube) but we hear about the most recent poll numbers, voting machine problems, and most other things associated with the election just as often as you do – perhaps even more because there’s not much else to talk about here.

Today three different students and two professors asked me if I voted.  This Gallup poll shows that many Europeans have a strong interest in the election, but it doesn’t really hit home until you see everyone in class look at “the American” on the day the circus finally comes to an end.

In my ‘Ireland in the World Economy’ class we routinely look at how Ireland stacks up compared to other EU countries and the OECD (all the indistrialized nations in the world).  On everything from competitiveness to educational attainment and productivity to infrastructure investment the USA is almost always in the top five, if not the top three.  Furthermore, we spend a greater percentage of GDP on measures to improve these economic indicators than almost every other country ensuring that we’ll stay near the top for several years to come.

For all the bickering we Americans do about what’s bad and what should be improved (myself included), we’re still better off in almost every way than almost every country in the world – and will be for the next several years.

That’s good to hear once in a while.