Theodore Roosevelt

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918

I don't have any polls to back it up Skybird but I'd bet that at least 90% of Americans didn't have an opinion of Schroeder one way or the other. There are of course exceptions to any generalization, but it's my opinion that Americans as a group tend not to get much involved in the internal politics of those we consider to be friendly allied nations.

Sure, you might see some interest when your leaders do or say things that are reported to us to be insulting or harmful to our country or its representatives but even then a large percentage of the US population won't take the time out of their daily lives to have an opinion about it either way.

To us it's "Labour or Tory? yeah but they're still both British right?" The distinctions between German Social Democrat, Christian Democrat or who knows what else Democrat are basicly lost on us. As long as one of the words isn't "nazi" or "prussian" we hardly discern the difference. Most of us, if we take the time to think about it, figure you'll eventually come up with a majority consensus and that's really the only thing we want to hear.

The reason for this, I think, is that most Americans, throughout our history and even now in the world society of the 21st century (AD), deep down still believe that America is the best country in the world to live in, so who really cares what the Germans, or the French, or even the British, are arguing about amongst themselves this month? Nothing personal about this you understand, just we feel its not our business what you say at your own kitchen tables about your own fellow citizens.

Europeans in particular seem, at least from this side of the pond, to be the exact opposite. You have opinions, strong opinions, on nearly everything we do. This tends to flabbergast us! You're always comparing yourselves to us in all kinds of ways from driver expertise to standards of living to sports, even our politics. Because of this you are often seen, as international busy bodies akin an neighbor poking his nose into our family business uninvited.

I do not say this is the right attitude to take, nor the intelligent one, especially given the increasing number of "world problems" a concept that to us here way over on the other side of the atlantic (or the pacific) was pretty much meaningless until recent times, but I think it may be an understandable one for a people on a completely different continent to take.

So, regardless of your personal feelings please treat our President with the respect we'd show the leader of your country were she to come over here for an official state visit.

Not because she is a Christian-National-Green-Socialist-Democrat or whatever you people are calling your parties this week, :p but because she, is the elected head of your nation and is therefore a representative and a symbol of German people, a strange far away people from the old world who, like the British, were once our enemies but are now our friends and allies.

This is just flat out wrong.

1. There were about 50 million Americans who voted for Bush in 2000. Not only is this not a majority of Americans, it is not even a majority of people eligible to vote.

2. The U.S. president is determined by electoral votes, and it was this "majority" of votes, the electoral votes, that matters, and it was this majority that Bush won. He lost the popular vote, and therefore a majority of voters did not elect him (this is significant only in that it refutes your assertion completely; it is not a critique of the US electoral system and the electoral majority that was what elected Bush).

Thus your assertion collapses completely under the weight of logic and facts alone. But let's set this aside for the moment and consider the findings from the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2005 that was conducted across 16 countries to guage from another angle whether or not people who "hate Bush hate the US'; to quote from its findings:

Anti-Americanism in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which surged as a result of the U.S. war in Iraq, shows modest signs of abating. But the United States remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed, and the opinion of the American people is not as positive as it once was.

..

Indeed, opinion of the U.S. continues to be mostly unfavorable among the publics of America's traditional allies, except Great Britain and Canada. Even in those two countries, however, favorable views of the U.S. have slipped over the past two years. Moreover, support for the U.S.-led war on terror has plummeted in Spain and eroded elsewhere in Europe.

And with the stage set, we now come to the heart of the matter:

Roughly three-quarters of the publics in Germany (77%), Canada (75%) and France (74%) say Bush's re-election has made them feel less favorable toward the U.S. And particularly in Western Europe, most of those who express an unfavorable view of the U.S. mostly blame Bush, rather than a more general problem with America.

So what to make of all of this? Well for one, the arguement put forward by Subman1 and August that "if you hate Bush you hate the US because we elected him" is a fallacy; yet the fallacy aside, in recent years more and more people have begun to dislike the US and the reason most of the people surveyed in country's traditionally alligned with the U.S. dislike the US is Bush. So you guys have it completely backward :D

By the way, here's the link for the Pew Global Attitutudes Project if anyone is interested in it:

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=247

Commie! :down:

It might have to do with the fact that we stick our noses in everyone else's business and as such we affect their lives as well as ours.
The countries of europe are not large in size and have neighbors on all sides with traffic to and from country to country so therefore your neighbors politics/economics etc. affect you.
Toss a stone into a pond and it causes ripples.
The average American on the other hand does'nt even know where Scotland is on the map let alone France etc. Most Americans don't even know where our states are located on a map. We are a self centered and ignorant people as you said. You didn't say those exact words but that is what you are saying, and proudly at that.

[Edit]
But yes America is still the greatest country in the world, but we do have our problems.

You get no argument about the downsides of playing world cop from me, I'm pretty much a national isolationist but what you call self centered and ignorant i call the common courtesy of minding ones own business. In any case as i said such ignorance in this 21st century with it's mass communications and nearlyinstantaneous travel isn't probably the smart choice either.

And yes, we do have our problems but America is still the greatest country in the world. That's only a slightly differerent version of your edit but, I think a significant one. Glass half empty/half full argument.

Bully! Bully! :up:

The part of the quote I highlighted in bold face is in large part why people in other countries take an interest in US policies and politics; that attitude is present in your discourse and in your foreign policy, and it makes people take notice because the implication seems to be that Americans can do no wrong, that their actions are always well meaning and benevolent, and that whatever they propose should be accepted on fiat because the US knows best and its politicians never lie, and never mislead.

The Iraq war is the perfect example of this. Public opinion outside the US was almost universally and unanimously opposed to it, yet to the US this was irrelevant; many Americans declared these countries "anti-American", and the U.S. government acted on the basis that it knew what was best for them, and these countries had better get their act together and start acting as such.

Take the case of France, for example. France is a democracy, and a sovereign nation; as such its government's prime responsibility is to the French citizens who elected it and whose interests it has as its first priority. France, along with Germany, the UK, and Russia all hold the same power within the UNSC; of these 5 permanent members, only two - the US and UK - supported a second resolution against Iraq, one that would explicitly authorize the use of force against Iraq and thereby allow the US to tap the full resources of the UN, political, economic, and militarily (through its member states) for the war; only 2 of the 5 countries supported the case for war, yet it was felt in the US, and still is, that the other 3 members were obligated to go along with the wishes of the US as though these other permanent members were merely client states rather than equal partners with their own constituencies and their own national interests. It mattered not, for instance, that there was overwhelming opposition in France to this war, that the French people did not buy into the case made for this war by the US government, or that just like the US and every other country, France has to put its own interests first and that to act so blatantly against the overwhelming majority of its electorate would be the antithesis to the principles of democracy that the US claims to cherish.

And what was the US reaction? Boycots, freedom fries, and a sudden interest in any economic dealings France may have had with Iraq (that Iraq was once once a US client state it had supported during the Iran-Iraq war and continued its relationship even afterward was of no consequence, of course).

Ah yes, the double standard. When Chretien, our former Canadian PM, turned down the invitation to participate in Iraq, his state visit was abruptly cancelled by the US whose President suddenly had other things to do (like go fishing or play golf); that this was done while Canada was fighting alongside the US in Afghanistan was particularly notable, even if you overlook the fact that we do more trade together than any two other countries in the world, share the world's largest undefended border, and have a long history of fighting side by side that continues to this day. None of that mattered though, not the relationship, the history, or the wishes of the Canadian people whose PM had only acceded to; instead it was more important to snub the Canadian PM for having the nerve to not do the bidding of the US President.

Yeah, I am too. Tell you what! You run for president on that ticket and I'll vote for you.
As far as our ignorance I blame on our education system. It teaches nothing of world history or geography, national nor international.

Skybird, if its any consolation to you, while according to the Pew findings only half of Germans believe their country is generally liked, in fact 77% in Canada and Spain, 88% in the Netherlands, and fully 89% in France have a favourable opinion of Germany. :up: Six in ten Americans also view Germany favourably.

You Germans are too hard on yourselves. :D

On the other side of the coin, I think us Canadians may be a trifle optimistic - 94% of Canadians believe our country is well-liked by other nations. :sunny:

Having been an adult ed teacher for nearly 4 years now i'm beginning to wonder if our educational system teaches anything at all. We didn't write as badly or know so little of math, geography, science or history when we were young, did we?

As for running for President, i'll have to humbly decline the nomination. I don't think i could stay as calm as Bush can if someone called me to "teh hitlerz". Eventually i'd act like an Australian legislator and punch somebody out and that just wouldn't do.

I can't argue with that:ping:

Neither can I.

They have the pig! The pig-hunt was successful:
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,665884,00.jpg

"The president said that he is looking forward to the pig."
(Spiegel online)