It’s eighth week here at Oxford where our daughter Willa is among the finishers which is how those who have completed their grueling final exams are known. In their three years at Oxford, students are only tested twice; at the end of the first year to see if they are allowed to continue at the University, and again at the end of all three years.  They then take five to ten 3-hour exams upon which their entire degree depends, a truly terrifying experience. We’re standing behind a police barricade just outside the exam schools (the buildings set aside exclusively for this purpose) waiting for Willa’s roommate, Rose, to emerge from her last exam. Rose’s friends are waiting with flowers, balloons, plastic leis, confetti, colored hair spray and Champagne. Rose will be decorated with all of this, in spite of police objections. The local Odd Bins even sells cheap Spanish bubbly intended for this dousing ritual. One by one students come through the gates. Each is dressed in the black gowns which must be worn for exams and each has a carnation pinned to his or her gowns; white, pink or red. It is said that in earlier centuries, white carnations were worn for the first exam and then kept in a pot of red ink, slowly darkening in color as the exams continued. Students these days are rather short on pots of red ink, but the tradition continues: white carnations for their first exam, pink for all those in the middle, and the longed-for red carnations for the final exam. Those emerging from the schools in white and pink stare vacantly at the spectators, pushing through the crowds on their way back to the library. Then someone will come out wearing a red carnation pinned to his or her academic gowns and a cheer erupts from the crowd. Police fines and University disciplinary action notwithstanding, the finisher’s friends break out the silly string, spray the cheap bubbly, shout names and shove funny hats on their friend’s heads. The more extreme dump flour or soggy spaghetti and crack eggs over their heads. Entering the Turf Tavern yesterday, Sam tripped over a trampled squid - the discarded remains of one student’s ‘trashing.’ Among the hundreds of students in full academic regalia -- Oxford, unlike Cambridge, still requires students to sit exams in dark suits and bow ties, with girls in black skirts and white shirts, velvet ribbons around their necks -- I have noticed something far more familiar to my American eyes: Obama stickers, pins, and t-shirts. They may not be able to vote, and many students may not have even stepped foot on American soil, but this is truly Obama country. Willa explains it:
 
Brits like to pride themselves on their skepticism.  They are not easily duped.  The lack of a powerful radical right is often explained away merely by their essential reasonableness.  Brits simply would not fall for that kind of thing.  So while others may fall into the cult of a charismatic leader, Brits are fully aware that just because David Cameron put on a baseball cap, that does not make him cool.  Mass hysteria isn't their style -- while we got through World War II on Rosie the Riveter their most famous slogan was "Keep Calm and Carry On." But I suspect it's all a cover.  In March, I stopped by the student newspaper's office with the rest of the ex-editors to celebrate the end of another term.  Just as they were sending off their last issue to the printers, I heard the already familiar "Yes, we can!" followed by a cheer, and then, a second or two later, the same thing, but louder.  Suddenly, the news editor, Billy, ran blushing to his bag and fished around for his phone as the Obama cheer grew louder and louder.  By the fifth cheer he found it and shut it off, looking around with a slightly embarrassed grin, before muttering, "What?!  I’m kind of a big fan."  This might not be odd if it was only Billy, who is obsessive about America, spending his weekends searching out baseball games on the internet.  But it’s not just Billy.  I had not been back two days from my Christmas vacation before I was first asked to explain the concept of Super Delegates and what it meant to caucus.  In the months since I have answered questions about health care reform, primary procedures, state's political leanings, Clinton's past and whether or not people could really, truly, take someone named Huckabee seriously.  There are hundreds of Americans in Oxford and we’re really not all that interesting or novel.  So, other than the occasional political discussion where the United States is blamed for all of Britain’s troubles, my nationality is rarely a topic of conversation.  But suddenly everyone was looking to me for information and answers to their questions.  At night I'd dash to my computer to search Wikipedia, gathering the kind of surface facts that made me sound informed and smart.  "Well," I'd tell the rower across from me at lunch, "super delegate is actually a media term.  They're really called PLEOs," and then quietly pray he wouldn't ask for details.  I've used the same tactic for three years of tutorials.  It's served me well.  But recently, it's gotten much harder.  My British friends are now dangerously well-informed.  The election eclipsed Maddy's disappearance as the media favorite and was rivaled only by Sarkozy's wife for column inches in everything from tabloids to the Times.  While I found it easy in my tutorials to fudge a few numbers -- I'm fairly certain even my tutors don't know enough about, say, 15th century French economic policies to question the numbers I spouted – I had to be exact about the poll numbers in Indiana.  My classmates had listened to all Obama’s speeches, read the news stories, and had a firmer grasp on the political leanings of Florida than most Floridians.  Their political spectrum being what it is (that is to say, sensible) they've all but forsaken the Republicans, but the Hillary/Barack arguments were long, involved and heated.  I was once awakened at 3 am by a friend calling me to resolve an argument she'd been having with her housemates about the role of personality in presidential elections.  (I haven’t spent more than three months in the States in the last three years and wouldn’t say I was the best source on our national mood. But in the eyes of my friends, I was an absolute authority and I’ve chosen not to disabuse them of that notion.)
 
Obama slowly became everyone’s favorite. It took time for him to win them over, but win them he did, one by one. His t-shirts, stickers, banners and window signs began to litter Oxford in the last couple of months. Before that, students talked about Hilary being more experienced.  They said you knew what you were getting with her.  There would be no surprises. But Obama has something else; something they have very little of over here:  Obama is inspiring.  With the exception of wistful memories of 1997, there is very little inspiring about British politics.  This is the country, after all, where the most charismatic politician of the day, the offensively entertaining Boris Johnson, just ran a successful campaign for Mayor of London based almost exclusively on the issue of bendy buses.  The main complaint about his predecessor was essentially that he tried to do too much.  In a country where politicians regularly admit that they can only try, and might not actually be able to fix anything, a political rally like the kind we get in the States is unimaginable. While politicians may be respected, they are not beloved.  There was enthusiasm for Blair for a while, but the years wore it off, and his momentous declaration that he could 'feel the hand of history' upon his shoulder is still mocked.  You get the feeling that if Kennedy asked this generation of Brits what they could do for their country, he’d be laughed out of the room.
 
American politics are something else all together.  Sometimes my friends mock us for treating politicians like rock stars. Sometimes they speak with disdain about the trappings of our politics: tour buses and patriotic rallies, and, of course, the marking of a nomination by dropping thousands of balloons and wearing funny hats.  Every time I mention working at the Democratic Convention this summer, my friends look longingly at me like someone who has tickets to a sold out match.  Our politics may be a game, but it's one they don't get to play.  My citizenship gets me onto the field -- the best they can do is follow along in their papers.  That and get an Obama ringtone.