UK: Opinion: US most admired country since President Obama took office

The Guardian

Opinion
from Michael Tomasky's Blog

America the admired

Here's some nice news for me and my fellow Americans:

The rest of the world thinks U.S. leaders are doing a better job than those in half a dozen other world powers, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and China, an analysis released Wednesday suggests.

Forty-seven percent of the people surveyed by Gallup in more than 100 countries during 2010 said they approved of the job performance of leaders in the United States, while 25 percent said they disapproved. Another 21 percent didn't know or refused to answer...

...In second place was Germany, with a 40 percent job approval rating for its leaders, a 17 percent disapproval rating and 38 percent having no opinion or refusing to answer. Coming in close at third place was France, with a 39 percent approval rating, 22 percent disapproval rating and 39 percent with no answer.

The countries that did the worst in the survey were China – with a 31 percent approval rating and 27 percent disapproval rating – and Russia. Russia's leadership got a 27 percent job approval rating and a 31 percent disapproval rating.

The U.S. rise to the top of the approval index is only a recent development since Barack Obama became president. In 2007 and 2008, approval for American leaders ranked second from last, leading only Russia. In 2008, the U.S. rating was 34 percent. In 2009, it jumped to 49 percent.

Obviously, there will be a percentage of Americans for whom this will merely confirm what a Manchurian Candidate the president is, and they will rant and rave about it, as I'm sure they already are.

For most of us, it actually feel pretty good, and it confirms my idea that there are millions of Americans out there who don't listen to those fulminations and are in fact pretty level-headed people.

Great Britain, by the way, came out flat in this survey, dropping maybe a percentage point in the last three years, from 35 to 34%.

The important and encouraging thing here is China's low number. One could have thought that would be higher, because China surely seems like (and in terms of growth undeniably is) a very dynamic society right now, so it's good to see that it's not lost on the world's population that there are important ways in which China is undynamic, shall we say

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/mar/24/barack-obama-usa-most-popular-world-leader