Editorial

A top Hollywood star said not so long ago that America is still too racist to vote for a black President and too sexist to accept being led by a woman. Yet, the choice of Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for the November Presidential elections already goes a long way in challenging that statement. Though, admittedly, the race is to the finish line.

Mr Obama and the Democratic Party evidently know that the going is tough and they will do all in their power to try to overcome the odds staked against them.

The trip that Mr Obama has been making is one such initiative. He has visited Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine and, closer to home, the Presidential candidate's tour included Germany, France and the UK.

When Mr Obama addressed a big rally in Berlin on Thursday, it was impossible not to recall the immortal speech that John F. Kennedy delivered there 45 years ago. Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a Berliner), President Kennedy had said. That was very shortly after the dreaded Berlin Wall had been completed. There was, therefore, a fundamental and psychological difference between Mr Kennedy's challenging speech on June 23, 1963 and Mr Obama's. Perhaps, his could never equal Mr Kennedy's but Mr Obama certainly had an adulating crowd of 200,000 Germans in front of him.

Throughout his journey Mr Obama was evidently hoping to convince his audiences that he has the wherewithal to conduct a foreign policy that would tear down the new walls that have replaced the famous one built by communist east Germany to keep its citizens in rather than to keep free people out.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," he told the crowd; nor could those separating the haves and the have-nots, races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews. "These are the walls we must tear down."

One could hardly disagree with that but, of course, between the saying and the managing there is a world of difference. Mr Obama did not go into any detail as to how the dismantling would take place, when/if he makes it to the White House.

The man certainly has charisma. He is an outstanding orator. What still has to be determined is whether he has what it takes to lead the most powerful nation in the world.

Certainly in America there are doubts as to whether he can do the job. This trip must have been planned for him to show the Americans and their allies what he is made of. And, yet, talking of change is all very well but actually changing things is something else again. Certainly, the American electorate will bear in mind the change of heart he had on hot issues such as the Israeli question and the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

There is little doubt, however, that Mr Obama's trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, his visits to Israel and Palestine, his rally in Berlin, the meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, yesterday, and in London today with Gordon Brown and David Cameron - but before both with Tony Blair to the annoyance of Downing Street - have raised his international profile considerably. And, in more senses than one, the senator from Illinois has deftly wrong-footed his opponent John McCain.