When does the growing popularity of Barack Obama , at home and overseas , begin to impact the terrible polling numbers that the United States has been getting in foreign opinion surveys?
Lately we've been seeing more reports of negative foreign views of the U.S., such as yesterday's NPR report from Berlin. But these reports are often based on polling data that are getting a bit stale. (The NPR story, which talks about German views toward the U.S., hangs on data from last Fall's Pew survey of foreign opinion, embellished by misgivings concerning diminished U.S. official public diplomacy in that country.)
Now, with the Bush Administration in its final stretch, and intense American and foreign media interest in the U.S. election campaign, isn't it time to , pardon the expression , turn the page?
In Germany, where local media routinely cites the Bush Administration as a kind of shorthand for every perceived ill of the United States, the advent of two Democratic contenders has the local commentariat in thrall.
For a sense of how this is playing, check out Der Spiegel's English-language review of German-language commentary about Obama. “Obama-mania has spread well beyond the shores of North America and interest increases the longer his winning streak gets,” wrote Germany's premier newsweekly. “The only thing German commentators wanted to talk about was the phenom from Illinois and the race for the Democratic nomination.”
Apparently, even the center-right German press is in the tank for Obama. Writes Die Welt, flagship daily for the conservative Springer Verlag, “Obama's rise is more than just an American domestic phenomenon. He shows what is possible in a democracy that believes in itself.”
Perhaps the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, William R. Timkin Jr., was right when he told NPR that the old forms of U.S. public diplomacy in Germany might no longer be needed. But was he expecting a new American Idol? Hang on to your Hute, Deutschland, it's Obamamania!