If the US elections were held in France, Barack Obama would win by a landslide. The “Obamania” wave that has seized France, like most of the world, comes as no surprise but has specific characteristics.

In France, the only other country in the world that sees itself imbued with a universal message, the US has, at least since the second world war, acted as a mirror reflecting the country’s deepest fears and hopes. The huge audience that gathered last week at the invitation of a “pro-Obama French committee” in the main amphitheatre of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris expressed, of course, a rejection of the Bush years. But it translated above all a longing for the return of an America capable of constituting once again a source of hope and no longer a cause of fear for the world – an America that would be admired for its recovered essence and not loathed for its abysmal performances.