“Japan and the United States, for example, are so closely intertwined economically, politically, and militarily, that decisions in one have immediate high impact consequences in the other.  Under these circumstances, the day may arrive when Japan will demand actual voting seats inside the Congress of the United States.  In return, the United States would no doubt demand equivalent representation in the Japanese Diet.  In this way would be born the first of many potential “cross-national” parliaments or legislatures.

Democracy presupposes that those affected by a decision have a right to participate in making the decision.  If this is so, then many nations should, in fact, have seats in the U.S. Congress, whose decisions have greater impact on their lives than the decisions of their own politicians”

                                                                                        -Alvin Toffler, Power Shift

The 2008 US Presidential election, which was won by Barack Obama was described by many as the most closely watched US Presidential election by the world and was even dubbed “The Election That Made the World Blogging.”   The world closely observed history as it unfolds when America elected its first black president whose middle name (Hussein) is synonimous with the face of evil in the early 1990’s.  The new US president will lead with three immense challenges that the US and the world is facing, in Obama’s own words, “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century”.  

All US presidents, after the end of the Cold War, has such an overwhelming impact on the lives of almost everybody on this planet, that almost everyone would want to express their opinion on who should be sitting at the oval office.   With the advent of the Net, YouTube and Google, this can easily be achieved.   And this is evidenced by the number of blogs, videos posted on the YouTube and the mock polls conducted by US and international news networks as well as magazines and newspapers of international circulation.

In mid 1990’s, when I first read Alvin Toffler’s Power Shift, I find his idea about other nations should have a seat in the U.S. Congress as the decisions and legislations that are made in this institution have a broad and great impact on the lives of the citizens of other countries, as preposterous.   I was a product of a State University whose student leaders go to the streets denouncing US imperialistm.     In the same manner that I don’t want any “imperialist” country to have control on my own beloved motherland, I believe that other countries, including the US, should also be free from the hegemony of another nation.   Now I contemplate that this line of thinking would be outdated in the age of economic globalization, outsourcing and supply-chaining. 

With the election of a Democrat to the White House,  the US and the rest of the world wait in eagerness for the resolution of the war in Iraq and the battle against Al-Queda and Taliban in Afghanistan; for the reversal of the financial crisis that brought down even the largest US banks that also lead to to the downward spiral of the international financial market in a seeminly endless domino effect; and to address global climate change (remember that the Bush Administration for some reason or another, did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol).  The Philippine’s own congressmen foresee that with the majority of the congressional seats in the US congress are being held by Democrats, and with a Democrat at the helm of the White House,  the Filipino Veterans Equity Act that is pending in the US Congress, which will benefit countless Filipino World War II veterans and their descendants will be finally enacted.     Even the company that I work for, which is the recruitment division of the largest Hospital Group in the US will be affected by the immigration policies the Obama presidency will make.   According to my direct superior, Barack Obama, being a Democrat will tend to favor laws that will limit the inflow of foreign workers, including Filipinos, to the United States.  Which could mean that the nurses we have accepted into our recruitment program would have to wait a little longer for their deployment to the US. 

Indeed, whatever decisions Obama’s administration will make,  would have an intense effect on the rest of the world.