No. 1 Barack Obama

Are you surprised?

While President-elect Obama may have little under his belt to warrant such an honor - Never prosecuted a war, coordinated a national event, or managed a continental economic crisis - it's obvious that the American political upstart has enthralled the entire world in his brief time on the global stage. His hard-fought battle with Senator Hillary Clinton, followed by his bid for the presidency against Senator John McCain, captivated even the ordinary people on every continent.

And while many Americans turned to Obama on Election Day as a source of change for the nation's domestic concerns, they were joined by citizens of almost every nation in praising and celebrating the election of America's first African-American president. Obama's story alone has inspired and motivated those in the third world to look with hope to the first, and has reignited optimism in other western nations left weary and shunned by eight years of President Bush.

And it's a difficult story to ignore. His African heritage, coupled with a diverse childhood spent overseas, has given people from Obama, Japan to Kogelo, Kenya a tiny investment in the soon-to-be leader of the free world. Pressure and expectation will hover over Obama until he makes good on some of his foreign policy promises, among them being the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, negotiations with Iran and a rapprochement with some of the other nations often left feeling jilted and isolated by the Bush administration. Such expectations may be unfair, but these policy ambitions are a big part of why Obama belongs at the top of every 2008 shortlist.

Call it ascension with an asterisk.

The world community is clearly honeymooning over Obama's 2008 victory, but the young president's real challenges lie ahead of him. Will the honeymoon come to an abrupt end in 2009?