Whenever I discuss the 2008 U.S. presidential election with my Indonesian friends I find myself saying the same thing -- that I have been an Obama supporter from the start, I am in full support of his policies, and I am happy with the direction he has taken... but I am skeptical about his chances to win.

"Well what's wrong with him?" they usually ask, bewildered. "I've seen him on television, he sounds great, he seems very popular -- why don't you think he's going to win?"

I tell them not to let the big crowds and big applause fool you; America's golden boy is more vulnerable than you think, and it has a lot to do with his international appeal.

It's true that enthusiasm for Barack Obama around the world is sky-high. In July, Obama set out on a 9-day world tour to highlight his international popularity and beef up his foreign policy credentials. After strategic stops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Palestine, Obama drew huge crowds giving speeches in Berlin, Paris and London. Normally, this would be regarded as a huge accomplishment for a campaign, given the fact that the current president is welcomed by protests wherever he goes.

But at home, the trip was branded as a 'premature victory lap' by rival John McCain, and Obama was labeled as a naove narcissist more concerned with French public opinion than American public opinion. While Obama was off charming Western Europe, McCain was getting chummy with his own press corps, even passing out satirical press tags that said "JV Squad. Left Behind to Report in America." Furthermore, the trip did little to assuage many voters' concerns about Obama's lack of foreign policy experience, an issue that McCain holds a 15-point advantage in among voters.

As unfortunate as it is to say, Obama's time spent in Indonesia isn't doing him any favors. Many American voters are uncomfortable with the fact that their potential president spent part of his childhood in a majority-muslim country, despite the fact that Obama attended SD Fransiscus Assisi, a catholic school, and SDN Menteng 01, a school that taught all religions, and that he has been a practicing Christian his entire life. In fact, 15 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim according to a poll in April, this assumption being largely based on rumors that he was educated in an Indonesian madrassah.

Obama's popularity in the Islamic world has also earned him some dubious admirers that the McCain camp has been eager to point out. In April, Ahmed Yousuf, political advisor to Hamas said in an interview that, "actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community not with domination and arrogance."

This endorsement, coupled with Barack Obama's statements that he would establish diplomatic relations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given him headaches with America's pro-Israel electorate that remains skeptical of a president liked by people in the Middle East.

And then there's that whole race thing. This, like the religion question, shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. It's the same thing as imagining a Christian president of Indonesia. There's no reason why it can't happen, but no one sees it as a political reality at this point. There is an assumption that the president of a country that is 90 percent Muslim will be himself Muslim.

The statistics in the United States are a bit less extreme, with 65 perception of the population being white non-hispanic and about 12.5 perception being black, but for 219 years, America has elected White Anglo-Saxon Protestants to the Oval Office (with the exception being Kennedy, a Catholic), a trend that will be difficult for Obama to break.

Recently, Obama told a crowd that McCain and others in the Republican Party would try to scare voters by saying he, "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." He went on to explain "I don't come from central casting. I'm young, I haven't been on the national stage long, my name is Barack Obama, I'm African-American, I lived in Indonesia. I'm unfamiliar."

While Obama may be the breath of fresh air that many people in the international community have been waiting for after 8 years of holding their breath with the Bush administration, the same things that have given many people around the world a reason to support him are the same things that his opponents have been using as ammunition against him.

The Obama camp made the point that if other nations were allowed to vote in the American election, Obama would beat McCain by a sound margin in almost every country where there's been a poll. Unfortunately for him, the United States is still in the undecided column.

The writer is on an internship program with The Jakarta Post and a student of George Washington University.

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