Global Views of U.S. Helped by Obama, Survey Says
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON — A new global survey has found a vast improvement in views of the United States since the election of President Barack Obama. But it also finds broad opposition to one of his key policies — sending more troops to Afghanistan — and confirms a drop in confidence in the United States among Israelis.
Mr. Obama, according to the survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, enjoys greater confidence among Germans than does Chancellor Angela Merkel, and among the French than President Nicolas Sarkozy. His election in itself, pollsters found, helped restore the United States’ image abroad to levels unseen since the Clinton years.
Improved attitudes toward the United States were most marked in Western Europe, but also evident in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as some predominantly Muslim countries.
In Indonesia, where Mr. Obama spent part of his youth, no fewer than 73 percent of those polled said that his election had directly improved their opinion of the United States.
But the survey, taken among more than 26,000 people in 24 countries, plus the Palestinian territories, found that anti-American animosity remained high in places like Pakistan, Turkey and among Palestinians.
Europeans, in particular, seemed to be responding positively to Mr. Obama. The number of Britons saying that they trusted the American president to do the “right thing” in world affairs soared to 86 percent this year, under Mr. Obama, compared with just 16 percent last year, under President George W. Bush. The increase was slightly larger in both Germany and France.
The right thing numbers also jumped in all Middle Eastern countries surveyed — except Israel, which saw no statistical change.
Mr. Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo to the Muslim world appeared to boost his standing slightly among Palestinians. But Israeli confidence in Mr. Obama to do the right thing slipped from 60 percent before the speech to 49 percent afterward. Israelis were the only people polled who gave the United States lower ratings than in past surveys.
For the first time since Pew began making the comparison, people in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria and Indonesia — all predominantly Muslim nations — expressed greater confidence in the American president than in Osama bin Laden.
At home, the president’s approval ratings on the economy have declined in the past month amid lagging recovery. It was unclear whether views overseas might have similarly soured after the Pew polling concluded in mid-June.
“I think that his high rating overseas are in spite of the economy,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Center, based in Washington. “His high ratings reflect personal confidence in him — and a sense that he will be much different than Bush — more multilateral, will seek international approval before using force, ending Guantánamo, getting out of Iraq.”
Announcing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay prison camps and setting a troop-withdrawal deadline in Iraq were the policies that engendered the greatest international support, the poll found. Sending more troops to Afghanistan was the only policy tested that was opposed by majorities in most countries.
The survey, taken from late May to mid-June, had national margins of error of 2 to 4 percentage points. The polling samples in Brazil, China, India and Pakistan were disproportionately urban.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/wo...survey.html?hp
heh
Originally Posted by FarangBa
AIM :: amjones2
No pleasing Middle Eastern nations. They're all bitter. I'm guessing it's the large concentration of sand and vaginas in that region that perpetuates the bitterness.
Right after the election there was an amusing video segment about Iranian views of Obama and they showed Iranians throwing away their Bush posters, buying new Obama posters and then later setting them on fire at some anti-American rally lol...
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..while his approval ratings at home fall.
where it counts.
I'm just going for the music..
d'oh@!
what a load of shit. Aint nothing changed in how the US is viewed. I just got back from Europe on business for the third time this year and the only thing that I heard was "Hope you enjoy that European style socialism Obama is making you guys pay for. We are trying to vote it away here". On the street they think our president is a joke. Dont kid yourself with some stupid article.
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everyone hates obama, he sucks!111111111 what a fucking joke, everyone, and i mean everyone hates him.
We dont hate the player.....just his game. He seems like an alright dude to me except for I can tell he would get butthurt really easy during some joking around. But as for him running the country..........he does suck at it.
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With him going off the handle and making off-handed comments about matters he knows little about ("those cops acted stupidly"), he's definitely on a roll lately.
I've heard similar. The last discussion I heard was from a British businessman who asked why we are so eager to throw away our freedoms speaking on socialized healthcare.
What sucks is I know that's going to pass. There's no doubt. And once it passes I will most likely lose my job. My company gets reimbursed by the goverment for our services and they're basically telling us we have to add 30% more patients and they're cutting our funding by about that much. There's no way we can opperate under that so we'll either have to lay off a lot of our staff (meaning long waits for care) or just close our doors (meaning no one gets helped by us). And we have over 150 clinics in the country.
Once somethings get changed you can't change them back so easily. This is a one way road.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying Obama's a bad guy. Everything he wants we all want. I don't think there's a person here who doesn't want everyone to have healthcare. I just don't know how we're going to be able to pull this off when we're already broke.
I want Americans to have healthcare. The problem lies in those we treat not from here and the abuse that goes on in the medical fields. Everyone gets treated here. Go drive by your local hospital this afternoon and count how many are turned away.
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"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." - Bush
lol. if you fail to see the problem in that....
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