From Tom Friedman’s Obama’s Rise Has Muslim World Giving America Another Look: “It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad…than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years. Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary ‘brand’ overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.”