Nicholas Kristof wrote on Wednesday about the cognitive dissonance that an Obama presidency would incite for many people abroad, not only for those who firmly believe that America is run by a "cabal of white bankers and Jews who use police with fire hoses to repress blacks," but for people who can't imagine a minority candidate elevated to the highest station in their own country.

This is not a reason enough to vote for Obama, says Kristof. And yet:

If this election goes as the polls suggest, we may find a path to restore America's global influence -- and thus to achieve some of our international objectives -- in part because the world is concluding that Americans can, after all, see beyond a person's epidermis. My hunch is that that is right, and that we're every bit as open-minded about racial minorities as Jamaicans already were a quarter-century ago.

Policy wonks might wish, quite fairly, that people would evaluate politicians on the merits of their ideas rather than their personal identities. But the reality is that identity itself opens and closes doors for policymakers.