( – promoted by chrisblask)
Yes, that’s the margin of Barack Obama’s victory over John McCain if the world got a vote.
According to a BBC World Service Poll of twenty two countries Barack Obama is preferred to John McCain by four to one:
On average 49% preferred Mr Obama to 12% in favour of Mr McCain… On average 46% thought US relations with the world would improve with Mr Obama in the White House, 22% that ties would stay the same, while seven per cent expected relations to worsen. Only 20% thought ties would get better if Mr McCain were in the Oval Office.
Now I know ‘foreign support’ can be counterproductive for Democrats. I remember the Guardian in 2004 organising a campaign to get British people to contact Americans in Ohio to persuade them to vote for Kerry… Look how well that worked.
Cross Posted at MYDD
But after the disaster of the Bush/Cheney go it alone years, it’s vital that the US remains a world leader. Apart from personal and professional connections to the US, that’s why I am on these blogs and such a strong supporter of Obama.
Only Obama has the leadership, the philosophy, and the skills to get the old alliances working again.
The US is the worst superpower you can imagine: except for all the others. As a European, despite the debacles of Iraq, I remember Kosovo and Bosnia. Yes, there was Vietnam and Chile, but there was also D Day, the Berlin Airlift, and the Reykjavik summit.
For the second half of the Twentieth Century, the US was a world leader not just because of military might or economic muscle – but because of its soft power: the values of democracy, freedom of expression, separation of church and state, and the promise of mobility regardless of class or origin.
With Obama, I truly believe the US can regain some of that highground. But the whole world knows – McCain/Palin: More of the Same
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