It's about presidential election, if  you're interested, then check it out. There are some my own opinions on the bottom.

A President, Not a Symbol

Editorials& Opinion

from The Wall Street Journal
March 11, 2008; Page A20

Sometime before Barack Obama's middle name slipped into the realm of the unmentionable, it was supposed to be a selling point of his candidacy. "Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush," Mr. Obama told PBS's Tavis Smiley on October 18, 2007. "If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver that message."

There are many reasons the idea of an Obama presidency appeals to so many Americans, and not the least of them is that it appeals to so many non-Americans. He blends his several identities so seamlessly as to seem to be part everything -- and so for everyone, everywhere, to feel as if they have a part of him. He combines style, eloquence, youth and a common touch in a way the world hasn't seen in an American president since 1961. His soft-left brand of foreign policy, with its emphasis on global "challenges" rather than American interests, is broadly appealing to the rest of the world (or at least the segment that's in the business of writing op-eds that are later quoted back to American audiences).

AP

And he is a symbol. Japan and Britain have monarchs, and Israel and Italy have presidents, whose function is to represent the dignity and continuity of a nation above the political fray. But in the U.S. the functions of head of state and head of government are combined. As a head of state, if not yet of government, Mr. Obama seems to have requisite qualifications.

The question is whether the virtues that Mr. Obama would bring to the Oval Office as a symbol will translate into effectiveness as a president. The strong argument that they will rests on Harvard professor Joseph Nye's notion of "soft power": The idea that America's real strength rests not so much on its ability to impose -- as it can and often does through the military and economic tools of hard power -- but on its ability to attract. In this reading, Mr. Obama offers a double dollop of global promise, both because of who he is and because of what he says he will do: Talk to Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; shut down Guantanamo; reduce carbon emissions and so on.

Maybe all that will come to pass, and maybe all will be well. Clearly an Obama victory will mean that the U.S. will be better liked (or less disliked) in places like Britain and Germany, where the Illinois senator is often billed as a new Jack Kennedy or even Abraham Lincoln.

Less clear is whether Mr. Obama will be able to retain that sympathy. A man who seeks the presidency out of the audacity of hope gives himself little room to be "misunderestimated." The expectations are titanic, or Titanic. What happens to Obama-as-symbol when he actually has to govern, negotiate, settle for the unhappy and piecemeal compromises that are what democracy is about? What happens when he has to choose between the interests of his domestic constituencies -- on trade, for example, or the awarding of defense contracts -- and the interests of America's neighbors and allies? What happens when he has to bomb Pakistan for real, rather than in a Beltway policy address?

The challenge Mr. Obama faces here is one reason Machiavelli warns his Prince about the dangers of being loved: "A wise ruler should rely on the emotion he can control, not on the one he cannot." Machiavelli, for one, understood that nothing is so sour as a soured love.

That's not to say that it hurts to be liked. But here, too, it's not clear that the affection that Mr. Obama seems so effortlessly to inspire necessarily inspires it to America's advantage. European admiration for Bill Clinton only seemed to increase after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but largely because he was seen as a simpatico politician hounded by America's puritanical masses. Mr. Clinton's popularity, in other words, was a kind of refracted signal of a deeper anti-Americanism.

There is also the question of whose affections we really need, as opposed to the affections we seek. Though the vanities of American tourists and expats may at times be wounded in Parisian cafés, the fallout for American interests is unlikely to be great. Five years ago, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seemed it might. Millions of Europeans poured into the streets to protest the war, and Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin formed a kind of coalition of the unwilling to obstruct U.S. purposes. That coalition did not endure. Mr. Chirac is under investigation, Mr. Schröder works for Mr. Putin, and Europe is a bit wiser about the merits of a trans-Atlantic alliance.

As for the uses of soft power toward America's enemies, no less an authority than Prof. Nye has pointed out that "North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's penchant for Hollywood movies is unlikely to affect his decision on developing nuclear weapons." Similarly, America and American culture is wildly popular in Iran today, and U.S. visitors to Iran invariably report being warmly received. But that has not altered the regime's attitude toward the Great Satan (much less the Little Satan), and may have even hardened its repression of its own people.

Mr. Nye makes another useful point: Soft power is not necessarily self-begetting. Governments, he notes, "can control and change foreign policies . . . They can promote, but not control, popular culture." Ultimately, America is liked, or disliked, for what it is, far more so than for what this or that president does. On the other hand, Mr. Nye does believe that hard power can beget soft power. "The efficiency of the initial U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 created admiration in the eyes of some foreigners," he writes, while it was the bungling of the aftermath that squandered it. Being liked does not mean you will do well. But doing well does mean you will, over time, be liked.

Still, it's not altogether true that the U.S. Constitution does not provide for a mostly symbolic high office. As with monarchies, there is one office that uniquely combines legislative and executive functions, albeit with little real power in either, and that historically has been used for the purposes of representing America to the world, usually at funerals. It's called the vice presidency. Mr. Obama says he's not interested.

Since I'm not very enthusiastic about politics, I can't understand some parts in this article. (Well, okay, maybe some of you might say that actually I'm a bit into the politics than most students.)
But still, as a semi-citizen in this country, I can have my own stand. As u guys know, I root for Ma here in Taiwan and Obama in the states while I don't have the right to vote yet this year. Their situations in fact are very similar.
The article said that " Being liked does not mean you will do well. But doing well does mean you will, over time, be liked." Yeah, I totally agree with this point coz it's true. People always said that Ma and Obama are liked  because they're  like idols or symbols  in people's mind, and often doubted  that if they're capable of leading a country. Well, yeah, that's a reasonable point and claim. The fact that their supporters like them doesn't mean that they can do very well. However, in my opinion, each of them, Ma and Obama, deserves a chance to make a difference.
At least, just a chance.