World Preference for the Next U.S. Chief Execs

A poll taken recently by the BBC of a little over 23,000 people in 22 countries resulted in an average of 49 percent who would like to see B. Obama/J.Biden being elected to the posts, as opposed to only 12 percent for J. McCain/S. Palin, a margin so large that the Democratic ticket was the preference in not just a majority but in all of the 22 countries.

This poll is an interesting result, because the McCain camp is forever saying that their man has so much more "foreign policy experience" that it's beyond being a given. So at first glance you would think that this poll indicates that, notwithstanding all his experience with them, the experience of citizens of foreign countries with him has not been good at all. Yet, much as I would like to, I wouldn't assume that, because what after all could his foreign policy experience have consisted of, that one doesn't find millions of community-minded Americans doing every week of their lives, and with more felicity and charity?

As far as I know J. McCain has never helped to solve any crisis during one of his many junkets overseas. Instead he has taken trips to the war zones to help keep propped up the American soldiers' belief that their trip is necessary. But he spends the bulk of his treks engaging in chats with national leaders who are obliged to be polite but only that, because he is (gulp!) a U.S. Senator -- along with the other 99 of that ilk, to say nothing of the 435 members of the House, many of whom are just as likely as he is to show up while expecting the same accommodations and especially with lots of picture-taking for use in money-raising and campaigns later.

In that same spirit of being realistic, I would also concede that, as with almost all polls except those in a jury room, the people who responded were just a small sample of the populations that these responses were taken to typify. Nevertheless such polls are as close as anyone can get to national referendums, and the answers of these 23,000+ at least suggest that though they may have not met J. McCain personally, they are familiar with his pitch, which follows very closely the very sad experience that Iraq has had at GWBush's hands, and that Iran and many other countries could surely expect at J. McCain's' as well.

I know that the Repubs will immediately seize on a news item such as this and wave it triumphantly in the direction of all "red-blooded" Americans while shouting, "See? Let's show those damn foreigners that we will never let them tell us who we should elect to be our head ramrod!"

The article that I read added that in 2000, J. Kerry won out over GWBush in a similar poll, being preferred by 30 out of 35 countries. But bowing before the criminality that characterized that year's elections, a few too many sectors of the American public refused to take the world's good advice to heart, though it was based on the excellent perspective of distance, and on the fact that people in other countries take American ideals quite seriously, while quite a number of Americans themselves, like drunks going out on sprees every night, tend to leave those ideals stowed in boxes set far back on overhead closet shelves where they need not ever be noticed. And, in those two tragic years of 2000 and 2001, so began eight years of intense damage to the country and the world in so many areas that it would be wearying to try to list them all.