How the world sees us, and how we see ourselves.

• Author: Alter, Jonathan
• Position: THE STAKES 2008

For political reasons, Barack Obama cannot stress it on the campaign trail, but the stakes in 2008 are simple: the restoration of our image in the world and our image of ourselves. Everything else flows from that.

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America's prestige in the world is central not for grandiose reasons but strictly pragmatic ones. Every big international problem nowadays must be addressed multilaterally, from terrorism to climate change to Russian aggression to Iranian nukes to AIDS to poverty. Without global cooperation, none of these issues can be confronted. And without American leadership, global cooperation will be spotty at best. The United States as "the essential nation" is not neocon exceptionalism run amok; it's a straightforward description of the bare requirements for problem solving in a complex world.

I think of it like the scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom gets his friends to help him paint Aunt Polly's fence. The United States can't and won't paint the fence of global problems by itself. We have to charm and manipulate other nations into helping, or we'll all get a whipping.

Our allies and their people understand the stakes. That's why 200,000 well-wishers showed up to hear Obama in Berlin in July. I was there, and met Germans who had organized Obama clubs in their suburban towns. They wore "Obama Tsunami" T-shirts. Why? Partly because he's cool, but mostly because they know that only Obama has a chance--just a chance--to lead again as the Americans did for so many years. The Germans I talked to ached for it.

McCain would try to lead, too, but in a twentieth-century way that would attract few followers. American prestige would remain at its current low level--or, if he indulged his instinct for saber rattling, it would sink further. By the time another president who could inspire the world came along, China would be nearly the largest economy on earth and no doubt determined to impose its values on at least some parts of the world. The window for restoring American prestige is very short.

The stakes are high domestically, as well, and not just because Obama has some...