A Black President Will Boost Brand USA Electing Obama will replace America's battered image with one of equality By Rob Quinn Posted Oct 23, 2008 9:58 AM CDT Copied Supporters with an US flag cheer for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., during his speech at the Victory Column in Berlin, Thursday, July 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Skin color is no reason to vote for anybody, Nick Kristof writes in the New York Times, but there's no denying that electing a black president would give America's image abroad a much-needed boost—"redefining the American 'brand' to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality." Almost half of people abroad polled by the BBC said a President Obama would "fundamentally change their view of the US." In nations where the image of a racist US holds sway, people find the concept of a black president so astonishing they may well drop their pre-conceived anti-American notions. "If this election goes as the polls suggest, we may find a path to restore America’s global influence—and thus to achieve some of our international objectives," Kristof writes, "in part because the world is concluding that Americans can, after all, see beyond a person’s epidermis." Read These Next 'Bad batch' of drugs causes mass OD in Baltimore. Surgical staff squares off with ICE agents. He fired the crucial 'ninth shot' against Trump gunman. Jack White made it to 50 without owning a cellphone. Report an error