With the presidential election rapidly approaching, a dichotomy between appearance and reality is the political spotlight. As Obama’s actions and rhetoric face heightened scrutiny, the shift in public opinion shows that though President Obama’s popularity has suffered both at home and abroad, Obama’s message of hope still holds considerable sway with some international audiences.
For Obama’s adversaries, the recent violence in the Middle East over a privately-produced, American, anti- Muhammad film confirms suspicions that the president’s attempt to leverage his image to improve international opin- ion of America has failed. Across the country, news outlets clamor about the drops in Obama’s domestic and global approval ratings. In light of this negative media attention, the public has generally come to accept that Obama is flounder- ing on the international stage.
However, as the media bang pots and pans together, the reality is that the word “drop” has different implications internationally than it does domestically. When it comes to international favor- ability towards the U.S., the Middle East – where favorability towards the U.S. has almost never been high – is an exception and not the rule; out of the twenty countries surveyed, four out of the five countries with a negative outlook on the US are situated in the Middle East. While a domestic “drop” in favorability results in a percentage consistently in the 40s, as recorded by Gallup Polls throughout the course of 2012, a current Pew Global Attitudes survey reports that an international “drop” still results in a surprising 70 to 80 percent favorability in countries such as Japan, Italy, and France. Additionally, a majority is found in nine other countries, predominantly in Europe and Latin America.
Former New York Governor George Pataki offered an explanation for this disparity, suggesting during a visit to Yale University that “the difference be- tween the approval ratings comes dow to the difference between seeing what the man does from across the ocean and having to live with it!” Obama’s image of hope still thrives abroad, where the foreign public does not feel the domestic economic desperation. Certainly, the state of today’s economy troubles voters. Many Americans are failing to find the jobs Obama promised to create, and blame the President for the anemic recovery.
Yet, as Ian Shapiro, Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, brings up, when Obama took office in 2009, enthusiasm had reached such a fever pitch that many analysts foresaw its unsustainability. “In 2008, the only place he could go was down. He was at the peak of his popularity and everyone had loaded expectations onto him. The post-election question almost became ‘who is he going to disappoint first?’”
While economic anxiety has driven Americans to consider a new president, distance causes Europeans to Bath,
commented Shapiro, “Europeans realize [Obama] has had an almost-impossible task, not only inheriting the problems of the past, but also encountering a Repub- lican caucus in Congress.” For the European community, the idea that Obama has played an active role in worsening the economic crisis is artificial. They believe that a term without the onus of re-election and without the Republican block would yield greater achievements.
In Europe, there is an even more fundamental reason for high favorability towards Obama. Support stems from the fact that Europe’s political system is skewed farther to the left than the American system. According to John Bullock, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Obama is more conservative than most Europeans; they support Obama not because he is well-aligned with their concept of “the left” but because they cannot embrace the conservative, American Republican Party. According to Bullock, “It’s very telling that even right-wing parties in Eu- rope explicitly align themselves with the President. To much of Europe, Obama looks like Luke Skywalker because the Republican Party looks so much like the Death Star.”
The domestic-international favorability gap boils down to domestic apa- thy regarding the global realm. “Obama’s success in the international sphere is largely due to the perception that he is capable of handling world affairs,” said Richard Wike, Assistant Director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. In America, however, a midterm election exit poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that foreign policy was a consideration for only 8 percent of vot- ers.
Because of this indifference, foreign policy usually does not tip the scales in a presidential election. “International involvement can’t help you [domesti- cally]; it can only hurt you,” said Shapiro. “It’s especially common for charismatic leaders who make controversial international decisions to be looked upon more favorably by people outside of their own country.”
This principle has been particularly visible in reactions to President Obama’s handling of the Arab Spring. In his involvement in Libya and the Iranian elections, critics alleged that Obama adopted the philosophy of “lead from behind.” Yet, according to Shapiro, Obama’s delayed response prevented potential blowback as a result of acting too soon, aiding his image in the Middle East. Despite this international success, Obama was domestically characterized as impotent by the public that took the appearance as reality.
Similarly, with so many media references to how Obama is losing support, the idea of Obama’s international unpopularity has become pervasive. People forget that although Obama’s favorability has generally dipped across the board, all countries for which numerical data is available – with the exception of Pakistan, which is miffed at the covert bin Laden assassinations – express higher end-of-term confidence in Obama than in Bush four years ago. This includes countries which the president is criticized for having handled poorly, such as Egypt and Lebanon.
Global confidence in Obama is still high because many continue to believe in his potential. “They [still] hope that without this Republican block in Congress and without re-elections at stake there will be a greater margin of maneuver, much more potential to deliver during a second mandate,” said Howorth. “Transatlantic relations are at a critical junction in a world that is increasingly multi-polar. Strong cooperation between the U.S. and Europe is a particularly strategic objective, and at this time, this type of cooperation is more conceivable with an administration led by Obama than one led by Romney.”
For many Americans, international preference for Obama is not enough. With looming concerns about the econ- omy, voters often forget the significance of a President who is well-liked abroad. “It’s the U.S.,” says Wike, “and certainly a better image said leads a country to set incentives to cooperate with the US.” This cooperation is often the key to economic well-being. Ultimately, perhaps appearance and reality are not juxtaposed; in foreign policy, it is the im- age that defines the reality of relations.
Amy Chang is a freshman in Trumbull College.