US-World Relations Need Obama

Europeans have high hopes for a potential President Obama administration, according to a Transatlantic Trends poll of 12 European countries. Forty-seven percent of Europeans believe a victory by Senator Barack Obama in November would lead to a better relationship between the United States and Europe, versus just 5 percent who think Obama would weaken the trans-Atlantic relationship.

By comparison, only 11 percent think Senator John McCain would strengthen European-American relations if he were elected president. More than half of respondents said a McCain administration would keep relations between the United States and Europe in roughly the condition they are now.

The poll queried at least a thousand respondents in each of a dozen countries, including Germany, France, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey. The survey’s release Wednesday follows the news of a BBC poll published Tuesday, showing that in 17 of 22 nations tested, respondents across the globe expected an Obama win would improve American relations with the rest of the world.

It also comes on the heels of a report Tuesday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain intends to publish a column praising Senator Obama’s response to the troubled real estate market. In an untraditional step for a foreign leader, Brown is expected to maintain that: “In the electrifying U.S. Presidential campaign, it is the Democrats who are generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times.” Brown’s upbeat assessment of the Democratic presidential nominee is shared by the majority of his country: 75 percent of British citizens said they had a favorable or very favorable opinion of Senator Obama. Senator McCain’s favorability ratings are considerably lower, with just 26 percent of Europeans giving him the thumbs up.

It is hardly shocking that Senator Obama would be better liked in Europe than his opponent, given that Senator McCain is a member of the same political party as President Bu$h. The president has consistently received miserable poll ratings at home and abroad, and in 2004 a survey showed Europeans favored the election of Senator John Kerry by similarly wide margins — 74 percent to 7 percent in Norway, 74 percent to 10 percent in Germany and 64 percent to 5 percent in France.

In late July, Senator Obama toured several European nations as part of a weeklong trip abroad, giving a speech in Berlin that attracted an audience in the hundreds of thousands.
Yet the U.S. media says that the polls in the U.S. have the opponents even. The United States was once well respected throughout the world and Bu$h has turned the country into a joke. The media and other critics have said that Senator Obama is lacking in foreign knowledge, but the attention that he received on his tour this summer revealed how receptive the rest of the world is looking for a U.S. leader that is able to communicate instead of telling them how to run their own affairs.

While Americans see themselves in a very positive light and having close enough values as the European Union to make diplomatic cooperation possible, almost half the Europeans see the U.S. as too aggressive and uncooperative. They feel that a President McCain would be a continuation of the “shoot first and ask questions later” attitude and a President Obama would ease tensions around the world.