The Myth That The World Is Losing Faith in Obama

America's improved favorability - click image to enlarge

To listen to Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, the world is losing faith in Barack Obama and America's image in the world is suffering.  The evidence?  The statements of war criminal Emperor Palpatine Cheney - who has in fact been indicted for war crimes in absentia overseas - and neocons who backed the idot fools errand in Iraq that squandered thousands of American lives and wasted untold billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.  Indeed, one could argue that the best accolades one can receive is to be condemned by Cheney and his like minded extremist, power mad mental midgets. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the reality and, if anything, the world is happy to have Bush/Cheney removed from the levers of power. Here are article highlights:

Dick Cheney is worried about America’s image in the world. “I think the perception around the world is increasingly negative,” the former vice president declared on Wednesday to Sean Hannity, one of the few talk-show hosts who could hear such a claim without being struck dumb by its irony. It’s become a frequent Republican refrain. President Obama’s foreign policy, opines Karl Rove in a new Wall Street Journal column, has produced “strained relations with allies and declining confidence in American leadership.” Marco Rubio recently added that, “In Asia, our allies are increasingly unsure about our ability to counter both North Korea and Chinese expansionism.”

In a way, it’s heartening that Cheney and Rove feel the need to make non-Americans the ventriloquist dummies for their anti-Obama hostility. It suggests awareness that when it comes to foreign policy, they need spokespeople more credible than themselves. And it suggests a recognition, not always obvious during the George W. Bush years, that Americans should actually care what the rest of the world thinks.

[I]t’s hard not to ask the obvious question: compared to when? In fact, while faith in the United States, and in Obama personally, has declined modestly since 2009, it is still dramatically higher than when Cheney and Rove roamed the West Wing. For more than a decade, the Pew Research Center has been asking people around the world about their opinion of the United States. The upshot: In every region of the globe except the Middle East (where the United States was wildly unpopular under George W. Bush and remains so), America’s favorability is way up since Obama took office. In Spain, approval of the United States is 29 percentage points higher than when Bush left office. In Italy, it’s up 23 points. In Germany and France, it’s 22.

The U.S. is 19 points more popular in Japan, 24 points more popular in Indonesia, and 28 points more popular in Malaysia. Likewise among the biggest powers in Latin America and Africa: Approval of the United States has risen 19 points in Argentina and 12 points in South Africa.

Cheney attributed America’s supposedly deteriorating reputation to Obama personally. “If we have a problem with weakness,” he explained, “it's stemming from the White House.” But, in fact, the guy in the White House retains a personal brand that outshines America’s as a whole. And when you compare global perceptions of Obama to global perceptions of Cheney’s old boss, the gap is jaw-dropping.

Again, the numbers come from Pew, which has been asking people in key countries every year whether they have “confidence” in America’s president to “do the right thing in world affairs.” Obama’s popularity is down since 2009. Still, in Mexico and Argentina, the president’s 2013 numbers (the most recent we have) are 33 percentage points higher than Bush’s in 2008. In South Korea, the margin is 47 points. In Japan, it’s 45 points. In Brazil, it’s 52 points. In Britain, it’s 56 points. In France, it’s 70 points. In Germany, it’s 74 points.

In case you’re reading quickly, 74 points isn’t Obama’s approval rating in Germany. It’s the gap between his approval rating and Bush’s. In George W.’s final year in office, 14 percent of Germans had faith that the president of the United States would do the right thing internationally. Last year, 88 percent did.

[I]n most of the world, popular opinion influences policy. When Obama wants the assistance of Indonesia or Malaysia or South Africa in fighting jihadists or cracking down on Iranian banks, it helps that their leaders aren’t embarrassed to be seen with him.

When Bush was president, Cheney and Rove were defiantly uninterested in what other nations thought about American foreign policy. Now they’re convinced that those other nations yearn for the pre-Obama days. Back then, they were merely ideologically blinkered. Now they are verifiably, empirically wrong.

Frankly, it's to the point where one has to wonder why ANY credible news outlet- which leaves out Fox News - would have Cheney on for any reason.   The damage that he and Chimperator Bush did to America's image is incalculable.  Instead of being on a news talk show, Cheney should be standing on trial for war crimes and reaping the consequences visited on Germans and Japanese after World War II who authorized war crimes like Cheney and Bush.