IF I had a vote today, I might have spoiled it.
Yes, I know it's not exactly the politically correct thing to say at the moment while everyone I know is "ecstatic" at Barack Obama's historic electoral victory. In fact, some have said that I'm being an anti-change conservative.
That's not true!
I would, if I could, have drawn a box on my ballot ticket for Hillary Clinton and crossed that one. Surely you can't call my willingness to support a former first lady "anti-change" or "conservative".
In fact, I read Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" as soon as it hit the shelves at Borders. And I would be the first to say it was beautifully-written, inspired work of genius.
Alas, I'm not sure articulating that hope is enough.
The ability to translate hope into actual change that works is what's needed here.
What I'm reluctant to agree with is Obama's "spread the wealth around" Keynesian economic policies - so similar to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression. True, tax-and-spend fiscal efforts did help somewhat, but in the longer-term, conventional economic wisdom maintains that any form of market intervention inevitably leads to market disequilibria, as witnessed by the stagflation a few decades after the Depression.
His recent explanation for decline in US Q3 GDP was a little puzzling too. He said the shrinking of the American economy was "a direct result of the Bush administration’s trickle-down, Wall-Street-first-Main-Street-last policies.”
Yes, the Bush era has witnessed abuses to the free market system never seen before: The record US$10 trillion budget deficit and, more damningly, the worst financial crisis in a century. But I really doubt the credit crunch had anything to do with the post 9-11 tax cuts and more to do with poor regulation of Wall Street's activities.
Meanwhile, us non-Americans in the rest of the world have more to be alarmed about. Obama has expressly lambasted free-trade agreements like NAFTA which, he says, are bought and paid for by special interests. Of course, the whole "bring-the-jobs-home" call was tailored for domestic voters, but it does sound scarily like he blames developing countries, China in particular, for depriving Americans of employment.
Still, as laissez faire as my economic views tend to be, I could not bring myself to support the Republican ticket. John McCain was respectable enough but his misguided choice of Sarah Palin as running mate made me question his decision-making ability. As one pundit said, the Alaskan governor would be one 72-year-old heartbeat away from being POTUS - President of the United States.
Palin supporters, who might have liked her "hockey mom" positioning (which, by the way, was suspiciously reminiscent of Geena Davis' "soccer mom" positioning in the drama serial Commander in Chief), embraced her gauche-ness and forgave the bumbling gaffes in her network interviews.
But for us citizens of the wider world, the second-in-command of a major superpower whose foreign policy credentials rest on her "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska" statement, who cannot tell the difference between French President Nicholas Sarkozy and prank callers, and who defends trade rather simplistically as "not a scary thing"... Well, it's alarming, to put it mildly.
Obama or McCain? Talk about a rock and a hard place. My solution? Spoil the vote.
But that's a cop-out, I know. Sitting on the fence doesn't advance the evolution of humankind, does it?
So what's a non-American to make of the Obama victory?
I fell back on an old faithful: Richard Neustadt's seminal work "Presidential Power".
The renowned political scientist, who served as White House special assistant to Henry Truman in the 1950s, famously described presidential power as "the power to persuade".
Going by that classic definition, the undeniable choice this time round would have to be Obama. McCain, as gracious as his concession speech was, just wasn't able to match up to his opponent's ability to capture the imagination of the people.
If he was able to persuade Americans to be audacious enough to hope and colour-blind enough to vote, perhaps it's worthwhile ascribing to his campaign's "yes, we can!" mantra.
Even for the rest of us halfway around the world, it is, after all, not a bad motto to live by in these days of uncertain financial times. There are worse things than a world drunk on hope.
Time to get a little audacious, Joanne. Yes, you can!