Washington - Barack Hussein Obama will complete a remarkable breakthrough when he is sworn into office on Tuesday.
As the first African-American president, he will immediately, and forever, stand apart from the 42 white men who preceded him. But his significance goes beyond that indelible achievement.
Obama will also become America's first global president, taking charge under the shadow of what he calls "the worst recession since the Great Depression," a worldwide contagion with no end in sight.
His rise to power resembles John F. Kennedy's triumph over religious prejudice, though it is an even more profound one, because of America's long, defining struggle over race. Like JFK, he embodies generational change and has triggered a level of anticipation that exceeds anything in recent memory.
In a sense, Obama will be an entirely new kind of president: a political figure and an international cultural phenomenon.
His most basic political theme - a simple message of hope - has found a receptive audience across borders.
"He's telling the whole world it doesn't matter if you grew up poor or had dark skin. You can be a world leader," said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University. That idea resonates not only in the United States but also in "Kenya or Indonesia [and] Pakistan and Colombia and beyond."
In Kennedy's time, a young American president and his glamorous wife seized the imagination of foreign audiences. But the world they charmed was, in some ways, rather primitive by comparison with today's.
The revolutionary web of online networks that Obama exploited in winning the White House has made Washington the epicenter of a planet drawn closer together than ever before. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, observed that Americans had held a "world election" in 2008, and interest in Obama continues to run high in other countries.
Thanks to modern communications and his personal appeal, Obama's inaugural address could well draw a larger audience than any other speech ever delivered.
"It's only natural, since America is the world's media center, that we'd eventually have a leader that is playing to an international audience," said Brinkley.
Like many others his own age and younger, the 47-year-old Obama grew up in an era in which globalization is taken for granted. His personal life and perspective were shaped by his African roots and Indonesian childhood, both of which may have implications for his presidency.
