To most Chileans, the possibility of an African-American president is the essence of this election. Whereas Chile abolished slavery immediately after its independence from Spain in the beginning of the 19th century, we are well aware that the United States needed a civil war and 650,000 deaths to abolish it—and that de jure segregation lasted for another hundred years. So there is the hope that electing a black president in the most powerful country of the world could be the final closure on this long tragedy. As Eric Metaxas put it in his book Amazing Grace:

Everywhere on the globe, for 5,000 years, the idea of human civilization without slavery was unimaginable. . . . What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery, something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: He vanquished the very mind-set that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia. He destroyed an entire way of seeing the world, one that had held sway from the beginning of history, and he replaced it with another way of seeing the world.

But we Chileans are very worried about the arrival of an old-fashioned protectionist to the White House. As a small country, we know that free trade is our only hope for defeating poverty and underdevelopment, not just in Chile but in our wider region. Thus, we have fully opened our borders to the rigors and benefits of the processes of free exchange and competition. We also know that there is no more powerful force to lift billions of human beings from poverty—in China, India and the whole world—than free trade. So if President Obama were to implement the views expressed in the campaign by candidate Obama, this first black man in the White House may well be a huge disappointment for the rest of the world.

As is well known, we in Chile have solved the problem of the inflation of entitlements that is inherent to tax-and-spend social programs. Maybe that is why a recent Pew survey found that 60 percent of Americans answer “worse off” to the question “Will the next generation be better or worse off?”, while only 25 percent of Chileans think that way. (About 62 percent of Chileans answer “better off” while only 31 percent of Americans do.)

So we cannot understand why the issue of entitlements inflation has not been central in this campaign. After all, there are serious studies that calculate that the U.S. government has a $45 trillion (300 percent of GNP) hidden debt in Social Security and Medicare promises. But Obama’s solution (raise taxes) would only prolong the agony of a structurally flawed system.

In the end, too, we Chileans ask ourselves: Why is Obama afraid of the personal freedom and responsibilities reflected in the very successful Chilean system of personal retirement accounts? How can he, of all people, not understand that African-Americans would disproportionately benefit from personal accounts (which, unlike in the current system, they would own outright) and the power of compound interest? How can a Chicago senator and former University of Chicago lecturer be so unaware of the successes of other Chicago boys around the world?