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Can the Brits Swing Ohio?
U.S. Presidential Race Has the World's Attention
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 19, 2004; 9:00 AM
In Abu Dhabi, they're reading about the key swing states.
In Mexico City, they're gaming the electoral college vote (in Spanish).
In Beijing, a China Daily online survey shows 60 percent of respondents favor Sen. John F. Kerry's North Korea policy over President Bush's.
Around the world, online pundits and readers are obsessing about the U.S. presidential election as if it were their own. With polls showing Bush unpopular in most countries, the mounting interest reflects a feeling that U.S. voters are not merely choosing between Bush and Kerry, but deciding what kind of country America will be in the world's eyes.
For U.S. voters this unprecedented interest may feel meddlesome.
Last week, for example, the Guardian of Great Britain launched a campaign to help defeat Bush in the battleground state of Ohio.
"In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence's pledge to show 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,' " the liberal London daily declared, "we have come up with a unique way for non-Americans to express your views on the policies and candidates in this election to some of the people best placed to decide its outcome."
The paper's Clark County Project targets voters in one swing county in Ohio. The newspaper supplies readers with the names and addresses of voters and urges them to write letters opposing Bush.
Novelist and historian Antonia Fraser contributed an unctuous letter that might not resonate in all central Ohio precincts.
"If you back Kerry, you will be voting against a savage militaristic foreign policy of pre-emptive killing which has stained the great name of the U.S. so hideously in recent times. .... I say 'the great name' of the US because I believe that to be profoundly true. Although resolutely against the Iraq war, I remain equally resolutely philamerican, almost every movement towards liberty in the past having its roots or its refuge in the US," she says.
In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, more than a few Americans tell the British interlopers to get lost. "As I recall we kicked your asses out of our country back in 1776," writes one Bush supporter. "We do not require input from losers and idiots on who we vote for in our own country."
Even Kerry supporters are annoyed.
"Nothing will do more to undermine the Democratic cause in Ohio than having patronising Brits wander around Clark County telling people how to vote," writes another reader. "Please, be rational, and move slowly away from [this] self-defeating hubris."
Most of the world is more respectful of the independence of American voters.
In a poll and survey by the Israeli daily Haaretz, leading international journalists found Americans are held in much higher esteem than their president in eight out of 10 countries where the review was conducted.
"We are not anti-American," wrote Sydney Morning Herald's Peter Hartcher. "About 75 percent of Australians have a favorable view of the Americans and 9 in 10 believe that good relations with the U.S. are important for Australia."
In general, the online media's message for U.S. voters is that Bush's policies are harmful to American interests. Only in Israel and Russia did Bush attract more support than Kerry.
In Canada, where hockey fans have taken to booing the U.S. national anthem, Yves Boisvert of the Montreal weekly La Press reports that the vast majority of Canadians (85 percent) think that the U.S. exerts too much influence in international affairs.
In Spain, the United States has lost practical support, notes journalist Andres Ortega . Once an ally in Iraq, the new Spanish government elected in March has withdrawn its troops from the country. "A wealth of sympathy" for the United States after September 11 has been "wasted" by Bush administration policies, he says.
In Poland, the government recently announced it would pull out its troops from Iraq at the end of 2005. Public support for Polish military presence in Iraq is "plummeting," writes Washington correspondent Tomasz Zalewski in Polityka (in Polish), a leading political weekly.
According to Zalewski, Poland originally joined Bush's so-called coalition of the willing for three reasons: gratitude for U.S. service to Poland during the communist era; "strong arguments" about Saddam's defiance of the U.N. and possible alliance with bin Laden; and hopes of long-term strategic benefits.
Now with the discovery that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction or an alliance with al Qaeda, Zalewski says Americans should not be surprised that Poles feel like "mercenaries whose wages have not been paid."
And speaking of not getting paid. The Japanese government contributed billions of dollars to pay for the first Gulf war in 1991. Today, Tokyo contributes very little to the U.S.-led effort in Iraq. The Tokyo daily, Asahi Shimbun, suggests Japan will only back an American president with views closer to the international norm. They recommend Kerry "close the gap between the United States and world opinion, and voice policies that satisfy the rest of the world."
The election, in short, looms as a test of the distinction between the American people and the American government in world public opinion.
If Kerry wins, concerned majorities in many countries will see American voters moving their way. If Bush wins, the American people will likely transfer at least some of his unpopularity onto themselves.
U.S. Presidential Race Has the World's Attention
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 19, 2004; 9:00 AM
In Abu Dhabi, they're reading about the key swing states.
In Mexico City, they're gaming the electoral college vote (in Spanish).
In Beijing, a China Daily online survey shows 60 percent of respondents favor Sen. John F. Kerry's North Korea policy over President Bush's.
Around the world, online pundits and readers are obsessing about the U.S. presidential election as if it were their own. With polls showing Bush unpopular in most countries, the mounting interest reflects a feeling that U.S. voters are not merely choosing between Bush and Kerry, but deciding what kind of country America will be in the world's eyes.
For U.S. voters this unprecedented interest may feel meddlesome.
Last week, for example, the Guardian of Great Britain launched a campaign to help defeat Bush in the battleground state of Ohio.
"In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence's pledge to show 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,' " the liberal London daily declared, "we have come up with a unique way for non-Americans to express your views on the policies and candidates in this election to some of the people best placed to decide its outcome."
The paper's Clark County Project targets voters in one swing county in Ohio. The newspaper supplies readers with the names and addresses of voters and urges them to write letters opposing Bush.
Novelist and historian Antonia Fraser contributed an unctuous letter that might not resonate in all central Ohio precincts.
"If you back Kerry, you will be voting against a savage militaristic foreign policy of pre-emptive killing which has stained the great name of the U.S. so hideously in recent times. .... I say 'the great name' of the US because I believe that to be profoundly true. Although resolutely against the Iraq war, I remain equally resolutely philamerican, almost every movement towards liberty in the past having its roots or its refuge in the US," she says.
In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, more than a few Americans tell the British interlopers to get lost. "As I recall we kicked your asses out of our country back in 1776," writes one Bush supporter. "We do not require input from losers and idiots on who we vote for in our own country."
Even Kerry supporters are annoyed.
"Nothing will do more to undermine the Democratic cause in Ohio than having patronising Brits wander around Clark County telling people how to vote," writes another reader. "Please, be rational, and move slowly away from [this] self-defeating hubris."
Most of the world is more respectful of the independence of American voters.
In a poll and survey by the Israeli daily Haaretz, leading international journalists found Americans are held in much higher esteem than their president in eight out of 10 countries where the review was conducted.
"We are not anti-American," wrote Sydney Morning Herald's Peter Hartcher. "About 75 percent of Australians have a favorable view of the Americans and 9 in 10 believe that good relations with the U.S. are important for Australia."
In general, the online media's message for U.S. voters is that Bush's policies are harmful to American interests. Only in Israel and Russia did Bush attract more support than Kerry.
In Canada, where hockey fans have taken to booing the U.S. national anthem, Yves Boisvert of the Montreal weekly La Press reports that the vast majority of Canadians (85 percent) think that the U.S. exerts too much influence in international affairs.
In Spain, the United States has lost practical support, notes journalist Andres Ortega . Once an ally in Iraq, the new Spanish government elected in March has withdrawn its troops from the country. "A wealth of sympathy" for the United States after September 11 has been "wasted" by Bush administration policies, he says.
In Poland, the government recently announced it would pull out its troops from Iraq at the end of 2005. Public support for Polish military presence in Iraq is "plummeting," writes Washington correspondent Tomasz Zalewski in Polityka (in Polish), a leading political weekly.
According to Zalewski, Poland originally joined Bush's so-called coalition of the willing for three reasons: gratitude for U.S. service to Poland during the communist era; "strong arguments" about Saddam's defiance of the U.N. and possible alliance with bin Laden; and hopes of long-term strategic benefits.
Now with the discovery that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction or an alliance with al Qaeda, Zalewski says Americans should not be surprised that Poles feel like "mercenaries whose wages have not been paid."
And speaking of not getting paid. The Japanese government contributed billions of dollars to pay for the first Gulf war in 1991. Today, Tokyo contributes very little to the U.S.-led effort in Iraq. The Tokyo daily, Asahi Shimbun, suggests Japan will only back an American president with views closer to the international norm. They recommend Kerry "close the gap between the United States and world opinion, and voice policies that satisfy the rest of the world."
The election, in short, looms as a test of the distinction between the American people and the American government in world public opinion.
If Kerry wins, concerned majorities in many countries will see American voters moving their way. If Bush wins, the American people will likely transfer at least some of his unpopularity onto themselves.
Suppose Bush emerge from the elections victorious, will the line between the American government and Americans themselves become more blurry in eyes of 'non-Americans'?
Of course, Che. Those who don't see that will just have to be re-educated, right? 
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