Obama is a popular guy, and not just in America. All over the world people view him as a person of great interest. The EU saw him, during his campaign, as a man of all the people and viewed him favorably. Part of this favor was from the relief of having a new president in America. The European Union was never fond of George W. Bush and made no real attempt to hide it. “Europeans, who welcomed Obama as the candidate of change, didn’t expect him to agree with them on everything, but they believed that he would at least listen to them.”
And even while domestic approval ratings decrease, Obama remains very personally popular abroad. He was praised by most when he scrapped the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, indicating that he would rather go the diplomatic route rather than “lob bricks over their neighbor’s wall.” Most European countries do not have the military power that the United States and Britain have and so any efforts to reduce combat near their borders are welcome. Obama’s interactions with Iran are also applauded and keep his rating high.
They are also impressed by Obama’s willingness to come to Copenhagen for the climate summit and his ability to broker a deal at the G20 summit without having to use a strong hand to force it through. But there are some things that the EU is concerned about. While they know that compromises have to be made and that the president has to find a political balance, they are not really very happy about Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan – mainly about how long he took to come to that decision. The general sentiment is that Obama made everyone’s life more difficult by waiting so long to decide to send more troops. The EU has a large anti-war sentiment that is growing and Obama waiting made them look bad as well.
“Obama was trying to appeal simultaneously to two different audiences. He wanted to tell the folks back home in Peoria, Illinois, that the troops would be home in 18 months, and he wanted to tell the Taliban that an extra 30,000 troops were on their way to make life tough for them. The problem was that the folks back home would focus most on the extra 30,000 troops going out, and the Taliban would focus on the fact that they would start leaving in 18 months.”
Obama will probably stay more popular in Europe than he is at home because he is tackling domestic issues that will make him enemies here, while other countries don’t really care what he chooses to do with American health care. Like he was a year ago, Obama is still very much a beacon of hope to the EU.
While Obama is popular in Europe, his Afghanistan decision has really affected his popularity in the Middle East, which makes sense.