GroundTruth

As Barack Hussein Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America, he will ascend to what is truly the first global presidency.

And so today will mark the first truly global inauguration with an estimated 2 to 3 billion people turning their eyes to witness how Obama will capture this moment — more viewers than any World Cup, or Super Bowl, or Olympics or any other event in the history of television.

The world will tune in to hear what words he might choose to begin a presidency that sets out to restore not only the “hope” that Obama spoke of for Americans, but the hope the whole world holds that America might live up to its greatest ideals.

It is a moment that comes with high expectations that Obama can indeed change or “reboot,” as he put it, the way America deals with the world. And there are many observers who believe these expectations for change — from climate change to controlling AIDS in Africa, from terrorism to tariffs on trade — will be virtually impossible for the new president to live up to.

To gauge those expectations, GlobalPost’s 65 correspondents in some 45 countries have set out in this series “For Which It Stands” to listen to people in the countries they cover and to document what this day means for them.

And, based on their reporting, it seems every corner of the earth feels a connection to the new president in a way they have never connected to an American president before.

People across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe all feel Obama is one of their own. And in so many ways, he is.

In Ireland, relations from the village of Monegal on his mother’s side have transformed the spelling of his name to O’Bama and a catchy, new Irish song proclaims, “There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama!”

In Kenya, the country proclaimed a national holiday when he was elected and his extended family is being treated akin to royalty. His paternal step-grandmother, “Granny” Sarah Onyango Obama, 87, will be at the inaugural in the full traditional dress of the Luo tribe. Back home cousins and distant cousins in a small village called Kogelo all claim a connection to the First Family.

In the Arab world, Obama’s Muslim middle name has become the basis for a term of endearment. They call him “Abu Hussein,” a moniker which would roughly translate as “Papa Handsome.”

In Indonesia, school kids giggle with glee before television cameras there to record the same classroom where the next president once sat as a school child and took his lessons in the Koran just as they do now.

In Venezuela, there is a new name for a cup of black coffee mixed with cream, the “Obama.” Such a remark might smack of racism in another country. But in Venezuela, a place of many races and a sophisticated understanding of shades of white, black and brown, it is meant as a compliment to the president, an assertion that he is a kindred soul for Venezuelans.

And yes, in Kansas they celebrate Obama as a native son as well.

His American grounding in Kansas seems almost secondary to his experience in the world.

When Obama is sworn in today, millions of Americans will watch, but the event will be viewed via satellite dishes in small villages in Kenya, on static-filled televisions in crowded alleys in Jakarta, in cafes across Europe and in the sprawling apartment blocks of Beijing.

The world looks on at this event with some sense of what would have to be called envy.

At least that was a theme that came through the powerful reporting of our correspondents who asked one question in the countries where they live: What does the idea of America mean to the world?

Gershom Gorenberg, writing from Jerusalem, wrote how Israelis and Palestinians —once again locked in a brutal conflict — look at the United States on this day with a jealous recognition that America knows how to write its own history. America can redefine itself anew, and Gorenberg wrote how Israelis and Palestinians can only look on and wonder why they cannot seem to do the same.

A similar sentiment — for very different reasons — was also heard among the youth of Italy. Our correspondent Angelica Marin found them longing for a political process that might engage them in the way American youth were in electing Obama, and that they, too, might transform their political landscape in a new way.

Even in France our Paris correspondent Mildrade Cherfils found her neighbors pondering the issue of race in a way they never had before, and it’s not often that the French offer a self-effacing moment of recognition to America for living up to its promise of equality.

In Africa, there is unbridled faith that a president whose father hails from Kenya will embrace the desperate need to not just continue but enhance funding to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), which was started by President George W. Bush.

In the Middle East, the Arab street holds out hope that a president whose middle name is Arabic and who was clearly opposed to the war in Iraq might finally establish a reputation for America as an even-handed broker in the region and help bring about a lasting and just peace for the Palestinians and Israelis.

But at the end of the day, Obama is the president of the United States, not the world. And that reality will inevitably confront him very soon.

It will no doubt be an extraordinarily difficult task for this administration to manage down the expectations the world holds for Obama.

With an economic downturn not seen since the Great Depression, he may not be able to fund Pepfar at the levels that President Bush has proposed.

With a need to turn his attention to Afghanistan and begin his promised draw down of troops in Iraq, it is not certain that he will be able to focus his diplomatic efforts on the boiling tensions of the Israelis and Palestinians anytime soon.

The domestic needs for energy may undercut his promises to address global concerns on climate change.

And so these questions loom large before Obama as he enters the Oval Office: If he truly is the first global president, will his worldwide constituents be patient with his promise for change? And will he ever be able to live up to all that the world expects from the United States of America?