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The Rest of the World Wants Kerry
Pentagram writes "A poll by GlobeScan Inc and the University of Maryland of 34,330 people from 35 countries found almost all of them gave a strong backing to Kerry; less than one in five backed Bush.
Only people from the Phillipines, Poland and Nigeria clearly backed Bush, whereas Norway gave Kerry the strongest backing with 74% to Bush's 7%. The UK, the US's most vocal ally during the Bush-led Iraq invasion, overwhelmingly preferred Kerry at 47% to 16%."
May be it's time the US has two presidents
One for the people of the US and the other for the world
Everyone'd be happy
The don't want Bush.
This may not be completely accurate.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say:
"The Rest of the World Wants Anyone but Bush"
Please do not say things like "the UK is Bush's most vocal ally". Most people here hate the Bush - it's only our stupid leaders who are buddying up to him.
Given the current media attitude, this will no doubt be spun as "world wants a less firm, less studly leader than Bush so it can do its Francophilic walk-over our fine democratic values."
Alternative spins include "the world wants a nuanced leader who understands the issues", or "the world wants less war", or "the world wants to attack us so they need a senator in charge", or "the world likes red ties more than blue".
Hmm... it'll be interesting, but I think this is mostly a non-fact. World opinion doesn't count much within the US.
If the US takes an isolationist stance, that's not a bad thing. If we'd rather have more UN engagements (i.e. less US soldiers, easier for us to pull out and leave our allies holding the stick, et cetera), though, it might be worth paying attention.
"World wants to send soliders in to fight our battles, but only if we change leaders!" Now that's an odd spin we could try.
A.
As I'm quite sure the rest of the world doesn't have our best interests in mind, just the opposite in fact.
No, Al Queda wants Bush. He's a great whipping boy to drum up support for their agenda.
You can spin this data any way you want to (assuming it is valid data - I would tend to assume that the voting population in the study was hardly randomized among all the various determinant factors). I'll provide an opposed spin (it's stupid, but no more so than any of the others) that makes the data pro-Bush:
In the current geopolitical scene, one country's financial loss is another's gain. Therefore smart people in the world would try to push for a candidate in the US who would cause the US to lose in the larger global fiscal game (not in a big de-stabilizing way that would backfire, just enough that the other countries can take advantage). Therefore the fact that people outside the US overwhelmingly favor Kerry means that they are predicting (in the market sense) that Bush would lead to a stronger US fiscal victory over the rest of the world.
11*43+456^2
It's funny, the second I saw this article I thought that there were going to be two basic responses from Amercians. Response A) The rest of the world gets no say (to varying degrees of rudeness). And B) See, Bush is undermining us abroad (with varying degrees of Bush-bashing).
It's funny because both are 100% percent correct, and each will be used to support arguments that disagree with each other. In particular, while I agree that the rest of the world gets no say, and wouldn't for a second suggest changing that, to gruffly deny that we don't all have a stake is laughable. The world is a small place, and getting - relatively - smaller. More people, more interconnected economies, better communication, more, faster and easier travel, shared environmental and social problems etc. What happens in the US affects the rest of us, just as what happens to the rest of us affects the US. Even if we don't live in the "Axis of Evil". The rest of the world sees the outsider looking in perspective of Bush and we don't like what we see. Also, the much of the rest of the world still has laws about media fairness and impartiality and so we don't get relentless repetition of the GOP's weekly talking points passing as news. Bias check, I'm left wing by the standards of a country that has been called Soviet Canuckistan by you Americans. So by American standards that places me three steps to the left of Psycho-pinko-commie-freaks. By Canadian standards I'm part of the third largest political party in the country.
I digress. We want to see Bush out because I, and most of the rest of the world, perceive Bush and the types of things that have happened under him as negative, destructive and dangerous. I frankly don't know much about Kerry, and thanks to the American media's relentless refusal to actually discuss issues and focus on election platforms, neither do most Americans. Ask yourself next time you see the media focusing on medals, ribbons, type setting etc - Do you really know anything about either candidate's platforms? Really really? Do you know Kerry's? Bush's? If not, why not? Shouldn't that bother you? This is an election isn't it? And as much as the spin machine wants to talk about easily misconstrued things like character and "flip-flopping", platform and issues matter. And shouting "Terrorist" over and over isn't an issue, it isn't a platform, and if you elect the candidate that insists on doing it...well, the rest of the world will have to wait four for years to get what we want and you'll get four more years of Bush. Enjoy them and try not to bomb anything.
That's just foolish -- we're not alone in the world. Globalization means that we're intricately interconnected with much of the rest of the world, and highly dependent on other nations. If American went isolationist tomorrow, we'd starve to death within weeks.
There's good reason why only Americans can vote in American elections. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider all of the facts, including the fact that the rest of the world is getting increasingly wary about the United States.
-Waldo Jaquith
Read the news! Al Qaeda endorsed Bush. Here's the reporting from Fox News, of all places:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114489,00.html
The statement tells American voters that Abu Hafs al-Masri supports the re-election campaign of President Bush: "We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections."
The statement said Abu Hafs al-Masri needs what it called Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" because they would "wake up" the Islamic world.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
The takeaway from the Madrid bombings is not how it swayed Spanish politics, rather how smart and media-savvy the terrorists are for making themselves appear to the rest of the world as having swayed the elections, and in the process embarrasing Bush.
Is sex the only thing that can get you into trouble?
Even sex wouldn't stop Bush. After all, he already fucked the economy, he fucked Iraq, he fucked our international relations, he fucked our intelligence services, he fucked our civil liberties, and he fucked our electoral system. Kinda puts a blowjob from an intern into perspective, doesn't it?
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Clinton was (still is) pretty popular with at least some sections of the public here in the UK.
His implementation of foreign policy was far from perfect but he clearly meant well (for a US president anyway) and the general approach was fairly multilateral by today's standards. eg its conceivable that Clinton might have signed the US up to the "Kyoto Protocol" on carbon emissions.
The business with Monica Lewinsky didn't hurt him a bit. Actually I think many people saw the humour in the situation, or sympathised with this minor and clearly human failing of succumbing to a bit of illicit nookie. The roasting he got afterwards didn't play well over here (Kenneth Starr as a jumped-up, joyless pinprick). There was the further barracking via impeachment proceedings etc. and it all didnt reflect well on the republicans who were clearly just out to bring the man down by whatever dirty methods they could muster, no matter how hypocritical.
It didn't hurt that Clinton had an easygoing manner, played the sax in his off hours, and that he had treated the world to a Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" line-up reunion concert at his inaugural ball (utterly priceless - thanks Bill!)
Country: Kerry, Bush, neither
Kerry
Germany: 74%, 10%, 16%
Norway: 74%, 7%, 19%
France: 64%, 5%, 31%
Canada: 61%, 16%, 23%
Italy: 58%, 14%, 28%
Brazil: 57%, 14%, 29%
Indonesia: 57%, 34%, 9%
China: 52%, 12%, 36%
Kerry, no mandate
UK: 47%, 16%, 37%
Japan: 43%, 32%, 25%
Too close to call, no mandate
India: 34%, 33%, 33%
Bush
Philippines: 32%, 57%, 11%
Neither, no mandate
Spain: 45%, 7%, 48%
Mexico: 38%, 18%, 44%
Nigeria: 33%, 27%, 40%
Thailand: 30%, 33%, 37%
Poland: 26%, 31%, 43%
2000: Gore, Bush, other, none of the candidates
None of the candidates
USA: 22.0%**, 21.8%**, 1.7%, 54.5%*
* Eligible voters
** Gore, Bush, and other's percentage support of eligible (I hope)
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