The rest of the world is happy, even ecstatic, over the outcome of our presidential election. Europe, especially, went nuts over Barack Obama - and nobody went nuttier than the French.
The way the French see it, President Bush distilled in his person everything bad about us - a bullying arrogance, prone to violence, dismissive of the rest of the world and, perhaps worst of all, an insufficient appreciation of the greatness of France. All that reversed itself when the networks called the election for Obama.
We don't want to say that the French went overboard, but Rama Yade, France's junior minister for human rights, said, "This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times 10. America is re-becoming a New World. ... this morning, we all want to be Americans so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes." Oh, my.
A usually anti-American left-wing Web site, Rue89, gushed, "This time the world says thank you to America." That's the first time the French left has thanked us for anything. Maybe it has finally gotten over the role the United States played in revealing what a morally and intellectually bankrupt institution the Soviet Union was.
We should enjoy this love fest while it lasts. The French, after all, coined the expression, "The more things change, the more they remain the same."
