KEY POINTS:
What I like most about Barack Obama is that he is seriously alternative.
I have two confessions to make about Barack Obama.
One is that I fell in love with him when he danced on the Ellen show a year ago. He had me at the
first wiggle. He was everything Barry White should have looked like, but didn't, when he sang I'm Gonna Love You Just a Litte More Baby.
I was new to Barack. I had yet to hear his incredible oratory, his "spread the wealth" politics or seen him withstand a dirty election campaign with dignity and stillness. I was shallow, I like a man who looks hot and can dance. Shoot me.
The other confession is that I tried to donate some money to his election campaign. It was a slow day on the laptop, and I had signed up as a supporter which meant Barack sends me and 65 million others a personal email every day.
This day he was asking everyone to send $5. I figured that wasn't too much to pay to ensure that I could turn on CNN and see more of the man I love, rather than John McCain, who looks two seconds away from a coronary. Unfortunately I was prevented from doing so because you had to prove you were a United States citizen to cough up.
Americans may not be afraid of the Taleban, but apparently the thought of my foreign influence on their president is too much to take.
Fortunately, I have friends who live in the States and who have provided me with two Barack T-shirts and when I wear them people stare at my chest for a long time. I don't care. I just like wearing him, he's a good fit.
Perhaps my love affair is simply because in New Zealand we lack politicians on whom the words "cool", "attractive" and "eloquent" sit comfortably. Is it wrong to demand that people we see on our television screens are nice to look at? Television is a visual medium, after all.
Or perhaps I am simply excited that with Barack's election the 21st century will finally begin. Most people thought it began some time around 2000 when we became fixated with Y2K and fantasised about a brave new world with the rabid imaginations of children who are told that one day they will live on the moon.
But life never really changed much. It simply plodded along for the past eight years just as it always had with no change in the kind or style of leadership we have had here or internationally. (Sorry about that, Helen).
Obama is a truly different kind of leader, not just because he is hot _ although, Lord knows, that is quite a change _ but because you know he has an open mind and has been exposed to new ideas all his life.
I like the fact that the leader of the free world has seen some of the whole world and experienced different cultures, rather than emerging from a large piece of snow with a nice view of Russia.
I like the fact that Obama has talked and associated with Bill Ayers, the 1962 anti-war activist. He might be extreme but his insights into the $200b Iraq war effort might be worth listening to.
I like it that millions of African-American children are seeing themselves on television in political debates and rallies rather than as cast on America's Most Wanted.
No one mentions race much in this election because racists were never Democrat voters, but according to news reports, voters who "wouldn't want a mixed-race marriage" for their own children are voting for Obama.
The unthinkable sight of a Confederate flag waving in a front yard over a vote for Obama sign.
Is there nothing this man can't do? Next he'll be sorting out Palestine, finding a cure for Aids and getting the French to like Carla Bruni.
But what I like most about Obama is that he is seriously alternative. He lacks the background of the civil rights movement which produced former African-American politicians.
He's Ivy League-educated and has a white mother. He's apple brandy, not apple pie, and he's kept that low key.
He has concentrated on being the presentable face of Black America but deep down his thinking is more different than we think. I'm looking forward to seeing him dance all around the world.
