Losing the Global Popularity Contest

By Bret Stephens
Friday, September 12, 2008

Told he had the support of "every thinking person" for his second presidential bid in 1956, Democrat Adlai Stevenson famously replied: "That's not enough, madam. We need a majority!" It's a line that springs to mind in this presidential season, amid polls and reports that the current Democratic contender from Illinois has the support of just about every non-American interested in our politics.

The latest data come courtesy of the BBC, which commissioned a survey of 23,531 people in 22 countries for their views about the U.S. election. The not-so-astounding result: Barack Obama is the favorite in all 22 countries. The Illinois Democrat's numbers are especially striking in Britain (where he leads Republican John McCain by a 59% to 9% margin, with the rest not expressing a preference) and Canada (66% to 14%). They also hold up in China (35% to 15%), Egypt (26% to 13%), Brazil (51% to 8%) and, of course, France (69% to 6%). Broad majorities in most countries also believe an Obama administration would do more than a McCain one to heal America's relations with the wider world.

But here's a question: Should we -- that is, voting-age Americans -- care?

Four years ago, John Kerry made a pitch that we should. "I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' Things like that." Though it seems that the only foreign leader Mr. Kerry met leading up to that comment was the prime minister of New Zealand, it was certainly true that, like Mr. Obama, Mr. Kerry was widely preferred by foreign publics in almost every country except Israel. Too bad for him that none of those countries got to cast an electoral vote.

More recently, the British columnist Jonathan Freedland has written in the Guardian that "if Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger." The result, he warns, will be that the world's widespread "anti-Bushism" will harden into an unyielding anti-Americanism, presumably with adverse consequences for America's ability to rally the world to our side.

That may even be somewhat true, though I seem to recall that anti-Americanism was widespread even in the halcyon Clinton years. (Story in The Economist from August 1998: "In Egypt's hit summer film, when a character denounces America's treatment of the Arab world, his audience -- both on the screen and in the cinemas -- cheers wildly.") It is also the case that, since Mr. Bush came to office, the most outspokenly anti-Bush leaders have been turned out of office in favor of overtly pro-American ones: Jacques Chirac for Nicolas Sarkozy in France; Gerhard Schroeder for Angela Merkel in Germany; Roh Mu-hyun for Lee Myung-bak in South Korea; Paul Martin for Stephen Harper in Canada -- not exactly a trivial list.

But then there's also a question of whether our fellow citizens of the world have opinions worthy of our respect. Consider another global survey, this one from the University of Maryland-based WorldPublicOpinion.org, concerning the perpetrators of 9/11. Out of the 17 countries surveyed, majorities in only nine of them believed that al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. In Turkey, a longstanding NATO ally, 36% believed that the U.S. government was the culprit. In Egypt, 43% blamed Israel.

More remarkably, a mere 56% of Britons, 63% of the French and 64% of Germans named al Qaeda, while 26% said they "do not know." Fully 23% of the German public blames the U.S. government, as do 15% of Italians.

No doubt it will be said that if only George W. Bush weren't president, or hadn't invaded Iraq or rejected the Kyoto Protocol, fewer foreigners would be disposed to fall for conspiracy theories. Then again, anyone demented enough to believe the Mossad or the CIA was behind 9/11 is probably also a sucker for the notions that the U.S. invaded Iraq for oil, or the interests of Halliburton, or of Israel, all of which are relatively mainstream ideas in places like Germany and France. Whether these people also think that an Obama presidency would be good for the world is another matter; maybe the BBC will next do us the favor of measuring the extent to which the views correlate.

That's not to say the opinions of foreigners are worthless: Nowhere is Alexis de Tocqueville read more widely than in the U.S. But for every Tocqueville there are dozens of Sayyid Qutbs and Frances Trollopes and Comte de Buffons -- assorted opinionators on the American scene who have been proclaiming our degeneracy for centuries. Memo to Mr. Freedland: We took their measure long ago.

Still, it's remarkable how much Americans really do seem to care what the rest of the world thinks about our choices. Maybe that comes naturally to a country that offered its Declaration of Independence out of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" and by submitting the facts to "a candid world." I am unaware of any other country being established with a similar sense of courtesy.