As many of you know, our next book, out this summer, is called Curing Japan's America Addiction by long-time political analyst Minoru Morita. The book is the first I know of to connect the disastrous legacy of the US Republicans beginning with Ronald Reagan to the disastrous legacy of privatization and inequality left by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. To paraphrase Morita, while Koizumi had the telegenic charm of a Reagan, he had the business sense of George Bush, and now Japan is suffering dearly for it.

But all is not lost. A lot of Morita's book talks about the coming changing of the guard in the US and, eventually, in Japan. Before the US midterm election, Morita predicted in a speech we put in the book that the Bush legacy was finished and that the next American president would either be a Democrat or a Republican of a very different ilk.

In a Washington Post piece out last week, Morita was asked for his thoughts after Barack Obama all but wrapped up the Democratic nomination for president. Here's what he said:

"The primaries showed that the US is actually the nation we had believed it to be, a place that is open-minded enough to have a woman or an African American as its president."

There has been so much negative news emanating from the White House and from the boardrooms of US corporations for eight years it is almost hard to remember that much of the world is cheering for us. We blew the sympathy and goodwill the world showed for us after 9/11 like a crack addict blows through pocket change, but maybe this time we'll realize that after all the crap, it won't take that much to win the world back.

A French friend of mine told me that the joke in France these days is that they should be very, very quiet about how much they love Obama lest the Republicans start to use that against him. The world is ready to love — or at least like — us again. Maybe this time, we'll respond in kind. As Winston Churchill said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they've tried everything else."