For the past two months, I’ve been misrepresenting you, to myself, and to the people I’ve met while studying at Sciences Po.

I’ve never stopped loving you; never stopped being grateful. But I’ve been embarrassed. I bought into — and propagated — some typical stereotypes of Americans: monolinguistic, intolerant, gun-loving, tone-deaf to the international community, and uncaring about the environment.

While in France, land of the glamour and relatively liberal social policy, I’ve often bemoaned the fact that to you, I must return: land of obesity and constant brouhahas over not-even-universal health care.

You seemed hopelessly stodgy and out-of-touch compared to the European countries my new friends hail from. I began to remember grocery stores at home in North Carolina as only having genetically modified fruit, factory farmed meat, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the aisles. I “ironically” called you ‘murica one too many times.

(For the record, no one in the U.S. actually calls our country ‘murica. Even those of us with the strongest accents manage to pronounce all of the vowels.)

But on Nov.6, you dispelled my naïve, two-dimensional myth of America when you elected Barack Obama for a second term.

When you voted for marriage equality in three states — states that are not even traditional liberal bastions.

When you elected the first openly gay senator, in Wisconsin.

When you legalized pot in two states, and medical marijuana in one more. (And to think I had you pegged as a square!)

When you waited in lines for more than seven hours, despite natural disaster or laws explicitly constructed to block the democratic process. It doesn’t matter whom you voted for — that commitment to republican (lowercase ‘r’) values is admirable. Maybe you’re not so lazy after all.

But, besides greatly increasing the warm, fuzzy feeling American students studying abroad feel about their homeland, what were the effects of Nov. 6? Here’s a quick run down on a few key issues:

The economy

The U.S. was going to have to confront the “fiscal cliff” in January no matter who won the election. This “cliff” is a pile of postponed decisions about the budget, left over from the budget battle of summer 2011. President Obama has claimed that sequestration, the large cuts to government agencies (including the previously untouchable military budget), will not happen. And let’s hope not: if they do, experts predict another recession.

But, as we’ve come to expect, Obama’s agenda contradicts the Republican-controlled House of Representatives’. They’ve pledged not to raise taxes, even though that’s an important defense against the cuts. The world can expect familiar headlines about impending economic implosion as Obama fights to maintain or increase spending and Republicans fight for smaller government. However, the elections have provided the president with a stronger Democratic backbone in the Senate. This might help curb Republicans’ reliance on the filibuster (a procedure in the Senate that allows senators to delay important votes by talking for as long as they can — sometimes for weeks) and help him carry out his tax and budget policies.

The economy will possibly recover more slowly than it would have under Romney. Slate’s economic correspondent Matthew Yglesias writes that Republicans have actually favored larger budget deficits since the 1980s. Such deficits aid recovery in the short term. Yglesias also says that the Federal Reserve tends to have looser monetary policy with Republican leaders, increasing the money supply.

Foreign policy

Anyone who watched the debate between Romney and Obama about foreign policy knows that this was where the candidates differed the least. But would British Prime Minister David Cameron have tweeted “warm congratulations” to Romney if he had won? Probably not. The BBC reported a “general sigh of relief” among European leaders concerning the election results. Not only is Obama more popular personally, he and his secretary of Treasury have been closely involved in discussions about the Euro crisis. His victory means that European leaders won’t have to waste time briefing a new administration about the issues at hand.

That relief is shared by Iranians, says BBC editor Jeremy Bowen. Obama will set up a new round of talks about Iran’s nuclear ambitions relatively quickly. Also, Obama is internationally popular, while Romney clearly was not. This credibility might allow him to create a more powerful coalition against Iran, says Naser Hadian, a political professor at Tehran University.

Healthcare

About thirty million uninsured Americans will begin to receive benefits by 2014 as planned. Implementation of 2010’s Affordable Care Act will begin on the state level whether governors like it or not – and many of them don’t. Fortunately for them, Obama might be more flexible with its implementation at the state level now that the risk of repeal is gone. The Wall Street Journal says that hospitals can expect reduced financial burdens from needy patients, and that the healthcare industry is preparing for a major expansion. Americans will be paying more for insurance premiums, as insurance companies incorporate new fees into their prices.

Higher Education

The Obama campaign emphasized its commitment to students and affordable education, and our age group showed its appreciation in votes. Sixty percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for the Democratic ticket.

American Sciences Po exchange students are constantly jealous of the relatively low price of education in Europe, since we’re charged, on average, more than 22 000 dollars each year of university. (the average price for private institutions is more than 10 000 dollars higher than that.) Average student debt is more than 26,000. And the average salary for someone graduating from most four-year universities is around 40 000 dollars, making that debt difficult to get rid of while paying rent and eating. The president has already made the federal loans system more manageable. Thanks to his administration, rates are based on one’s post-grad income, not the amount he or she borrowed. (In contrast; Republicans, with Romney’s support, fought to raise interest rates on students this year.) And the president wants to help students out even more. He plans to cut the amount tuition increases each year in half. So what does this mean for Sciences Po? American students will continue to be able to afford to study here. And even though our country seems cooler than ever, we’ll still want to.

My dad and I get a long really well, but we’re supporting different presidential candidates.

“So how about the debate last night?” he asked.

“Let’s not talk about this,” my mom said.

That seems to be the theme of the discussion around the presidential debates and elections among my American loved ones: For the sake of avoiding conversations as uncomfortable as what was broadcasted on Oct. 3, let’s not talk about this. After both presidential debates and the vice-presidential debate, I saw Facebook statuses pleading people to keep political discussions out of their newsfeeds, and expressing fatigue at the inundation of debate coverage.

“Huh. Is there a debate going on or something?” one friend posed sarcastically before the first debate, in Denver.

“Debate time. Time to hate everyone, y’all,” another friend said before the Oct. 16 debate.

And then there was a nearly 200-word missile from one acquaintance saying that, “it’s a debate, it get’s heated,” and pleading that no one take out their anger on Facebook. Which is fair enough: right after the Oct. 3 debate, another friend posted a status slamming Obama supporters for valuing coolness over substance.

“YOU SUCKKK!” someone commented on the status, in what I assume was only a half-joking manner. That comment got more likes than the original status.

So it’s nice to follow the debates in France, where, impressively, people are just as knowledgeable about the candidates and issues as they are at in the U.S., but less emotionally invested. Topics that are so divisive in the U.S., especially abortion, a key topic in the vice-presidential debate, seem to be non-issues here.

Also aiding the relaxed atmosphere around the debates is a near unanimity in opinion. According to a recent poll, 89 percent of French people would vote for Obama if they could. Only 2 percent would vote for Romney, and nine percent was undecided.

In comparison, my home state of North Carolina is split down the middle. As of the most recent poll, 51 percent of North Carolinian voters plan to support Romney, and 48 percent plan to vote for President Obama. Essentially you have a 1 in 2 chance of disagreeing with your neighbor, or, in my case, your father.

In most cases, diversity in opinions broadens the mind. But being in France has hardly closed my mind against the “other side.”

Like most Americans, I’ve known whom I’ll vote for since long before the first debate. But now my convictions are stronger, because they’re based on facts, and listening to both sides, rather than knee-jerk responses to attack ads or Facebook statuses about how a candidate “sucks.” I went to a screening of the most recent debate, and neither side was drowned out by booing or cheering. No one in the audience made any comments that made me go blind with anger. I actually heard what both candidates had to say.

Although the presidential election is hugely important to my future, and in that way, gravely serious, it also can be exciting, and — dare I say it? — fun. The debates have all the trappings of good TV: drama, conflict, relatively attractive leads, comic relief in the form of “binders of woman” and malarkey, and a great cliffhanger. And from this vantage point, the bitterness is contained on the TV screen, rather than spilling into my everyday life.

Maybe I’ll come to France for every American election season from now on — so long as I get here after France’s presidential elections have ended.

But this January, he lambasted Mitt Romney for speaking French, implying that French as a second language is something best left to the United States’ liberals and progressives.

(As a side note, I’m not sure if this “criticism” of Romney was warranted.  A video of the Republican nominee speaking French betrays that his French is heavily accented — not that I’m one to talk— and faltering.)

If Gingrich really were conservative, he would applaud Romney’s knowledge, however rudimentary, of French.

Francophilism, specifically an appreciation for Paris, is every bit as much a part of the American tradition as the right to bear arms and apple pie.

“An American in Paris is the best American,” F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of the great American novel, said. More than a century before, founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin echoed such sentiment.

In the Civil War-era, Senator Oliver Wendell Holmes came to Paris and learned what it was like to learn aside black students, and doctors came to Paris to learn to operate on women and to dissect cadavers, both of which were discouraged in the 19th century U.S.

In short, Americans who spent time in Paris gave us the Declaration to Independence, the quintessential American novel, and some of our greatest advancements in healthcare (but try telling that to Newt Gingrich!). It takes a serious case of cultural amnesia to avoid giving Paris its due in shaping the American psyche.

But what it means to be an American in Paris today, at least to many other Americans, has changed a lot since the Lost Generation camped out Café du Flore in the 1920s.

I was intrigued how many at home responded to where I was studying abroad, especially in comparison to how people responded to my friends studying in London, Berlin, and Seville.

To many, Paris seemed to represent less of a place to broaden the mind, and more as a place to go shopping and to learn the secret of “why French women don’t get fat.” (Perhaps it’s just because they eat less?)

Others weren’t thinking about food, but were drawing Gingrich-like political conclusions. Upon learning I would be in Paris, adults tended to crack jokes about socialists and communists, which many Americans put in the same category as Death Eaters. France, for some reason, represents to many Americans the Great Welfare State and over-government involvement in a way that Britain doesn’t, and I got a few comments on the poor state of nationalized healthcare — despite the fact that, as aforementioned, the U.S. owes a lot of its medical achievements to doctors who studied here.

I also heard a few snide comments implying that, by choosing to study in Paris, I was choosing “study abroad lite.”

“I’ve heard that everyone speaks English there, and there are a lot of Starbucks,” a few classmates said. To them, the emphasis was on how our country has shaped Paris — not the other way around.

Clearly, more has changed than what it means to be American in Paris. What’s changed the most is what it means to be American.

Regardless of its basis, the American response to French government says a lot about our feelings — and fear — toward our own. And our obsession with how Parisians look, rather than what they think, says a lot about cultural priorities.

What has made Americans in Paris “the best Americans” is not that they were in Paris. That made them lucky Americans, with the resources to get here, and the social networks to sustain them.

What made them the “best” was how they used and appreciated the resources of the city; how they came in with an open mind, and left with than an appreciation for civicism, art, prose, and philosophy; that they were focused on making the country better, and not trying to “conserve” something that never was. Patriotism didn’t mean insisting that the U.S. was the best; it meant looking at what other places did better, and learning.

And the fact they could speak French? Well, Newt, it didn’t hurt.