If Jamaicans could choose a second home, based on where most of their compatriots live outside Jamaica, hardly anyone would dispute that that choice would be the United States of America.

There is an eternal bond between the two countries that no friend or foe can tear apart, so much so that the social and political affairs and the culture of the US very easily become the concern, and often the passion, of Jamaicans. With Jamaica's reggae music, the reverse is true.

This, to a large extent, accounts for the deep interest Jamaicans are taking in the US presidential elections and, specifically, the selection of Mr Barack Obama as the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.

The Obama nomination has already turned the political history of the world on its head. Because nothing in the current analysis offers a clear reason for the selection of a black man, still relatively young, still relatively inexperienced in the art of politics and who is certainly not from the monied or military classes.

Yet, in our view, nothing in the modern history of the US will be as life-changing as the election itself of Mr Obama as America's first black president.

To begin with, America would start the long and therapeutic journey towards healing lifelong wounds that started in slavery and continued afterwards in segregation and marginalisation of the black race - one-twelfth of its population.

This would have enormous spinoff benefits for all other races and ethnic groups, especially the growing Latino group, which make up the human tapestry that is the United States. It would mean something to schoolchildren when they are told that they can be anything they want to be in America.

Millions of these people who feel that they could only expect the crumbs from the table of the whites in America would now have a real stake, and what a powerful kick that would give to the further development of that society.

But if Mr Obama's election would change America, imagine, too, how it would change the world. Although undisputably the most powerful country on the globe, the US has not enjoyed moral leadership of the world in recent times.

The prosecution of an unjustified war with Iraq has continued to leave the international community with a bad taste in the mouth. Human beings cannot sit comfortably knowing that thousands of innocent Iraqis continue to be killed, not to mention American soldiers who are giving their lives in a useless cause.

Mr Obama has indicated he would seek ways to disengage from Iraq as quickly as possible, declaring that he would be "as careful about leaving as we were careless about going in".

The reaction of the world as evidenced by newspaper headlines from one end of the globe to the next, hailing his nomination, is clear proof that the planet is drawing inspiration from this charismatic man with a magnetic message of hope.

His election will set a tremendous example to the rest of the world about the need to treat with people, not on the basis of their race, but on their individual merit.

America now stands on the threshold of a new era when it can once again assume the moral leadership of the world, giving the human family a real shot at lasting peace and greater prosperity.

Executive Class

Gardens with Gravel

Death to the Mullet!