For the first time in my life, I will not be voting in a U.S. presidential election.

I am not proud of that, but here are the mitigating factors:

–We are living in Abu Dhabi.

–Getting an absentee ballot requires a bit more work than it does for people living in the States. Not a backbreaking load, mind, but it required us doing something — and we never got around to doing it.

And then there is this:

–We are registered in Long Beach, California, a city and a state in which our votes mean nothing. Our part of the city, and the whole of California, have been firmly in the “blue” column for most of two decades.

–And even if we contributed our votes to the total, each ballot would pretty much cancel out the other.

So, yes, we liked the concept of voting. I have never missed, remember. But the doing … with the background of meaningless ballots for any office from State Assembly on up … and the negating of each other on just about every race (California propositions, included) … well, we are sitting it out without really ever having decided to do so.

Certainly, though, a U.S. presidential election remains big news in other parts of the world, including the UAE. I was in Hong Kong for the last election (but voted absentee) … and it mattered there, too.

The U.S. elections are watched by pretty much everyone in the world, because the country remains the only global military superpower, and rare is the country with a foreign policy that does not lead to a clear preference for one candidate or another.

I can assure you that the UAE, and the region, are firmly behind Barack Obama, even though they are generically disappointed in him for not tilting more towards the Arab world during his term.

Mitt Romney seems hard for folks in the region to figure out. He is believed to be more pro-Israel than is Obama, and that alone is enough to make up minds over here.

Our editorial page, at The National, is pretty relentlessly pro-Democrat/anti-Republican — though it is generically anti-American.

(The hell of being the global superpower: everybody has an opinion, and no one likes what you are doing. The Romans could tell you about it. It’s not like the U.S. can fly under the radar, like half the countries on the planet.)

Anyway, in our budget meeting the other day, one of the senior editors pleaded for an op-ed piece favorable to Mitt Romney. Not because he is necessarily pro-Romney, but because, as he put it: “Every single thing we have run is pro-Obama” … and it’s not like we are officially endorsing someone.

I can also assure you that this part of the world assumes an Obama victory. Perhaps more than they should — especially when Romney crested in the polls, a month ago or so.

So, the paper will bring in editors on the foreign desk tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. (8 p.m. EST), to update the web site over those next critical six or seven hours. Also, a few Americans will gather at a house here in Abu Dhabi to follow the vote on CNN, etc. Sort of like an electoral answer to “breakfast at Wimbledon.”

And the UAE, and the region, and the world will be genuinely interested in how it turns out.