Both Obama and McCain will shrink the U.S. distance from the rest of the world

No matter who wins on November 4, America’s presidential election signals that the country is ready to shed some of its historical isolation and step out to greet the world.

The change can be seen right within the families of the two candidates. Everyone knows that Barack Obama’s father was African, but it’s startling to think of a U.S. president with a grandmother living in Kenya.

And John McCain has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh, which means in the case of a Republican victory that a child living in the White House likely has birth parents and siblings alive in a poor nation. McCain’s wife Cindy founded an organization that brought in medical teams to help in crises around the world. And the candidate himself was held as a prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years after his plane was shot down in a bombing raid on Hanoi, where he was jailed but also his life was saved by a Vietnamese rescuer.

Developing countries will not be some abstract notion to either of these men. Their lives are intimately connected to the rest of the world.

In political policy, McCain represents a clear departure from the usual suspicion of foreigners, which is stronger in his party than the Democrats. He deliberately chose not to make immigration an issue in the presidential election in a year when nearly all his Republican rivals were eager to stir voters’ fears of alien “illegals” as threat to American security and prosperity.

On the whole Obama seems more willing to engage with leaders of other countries, while McCain’s military experience and worldview make him more inclined to rely on force rather than diplomacy in international affairs.

Yet when one of these two men enters the White House next January 20, the world will see some changes.