Something was definitely different.

Our waiter asked:  “Are you from the United States?” When we said yes he disappeared.

Moments later he returned with a plate of vegetable samosas.  He set them on our table and said: “These are complimentary.  Congratulations on your new President.”

Upon hearing our accents, our Maori cab driver said: “Good on ya, America.  It’s a good thing for the whole world.”

We stopped in a sushi place just off Queen Street in Auckland’s central business district.  A smartly dressed businessman at the next table saw Dani’s Obama pin and said: “You must be happy with your election result.  We are too.”

A few days later I had lunch with the Rt. Hon. Mike Moore, an old friend who served briefly as New Zealand’s Prime Minister and later was Director General of the World Trade Organization.

Moore said:  “It’s been bloody hard to be a friend of the United States for the past several years.  But this changes everything.  It’s already happening.  There’s not a young person in Cairo or Calcutta or Africa who can look at the United States in the same way.”

“It’s one of the things I like most about the United States – you have a wonderfully self-correcting system of government.”