Opinion: If the U.S. president thing doesn’t work out for Obama, new poll finds he’d do very well in Europe
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A new poll out this morning delivers the fascinating findings that President Barack Obama is much more popular in Europe than at home. No one else comes even close to his foreign popularity.
Americans, however, have now come to like Obama’s vanquished political opponent, Hillary Clinton, the same as they do him.
And now they like the Dalai Lama even more than that pair.
As the president heads out today to campaign in Iowa, scene of his first state triumph in 2008, a new France 24/Harris Poll of more than 6,100 people finds the folks in France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, the U.S. and Spain like Obama to the average tune of 77%.
Back home, proving that presence makes the heart grow harder, only 57% said they still liked the Democrat.
But the survey found that fully 72% of Americans like the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan leader visited the White House in February. But so concerned was the Obama administration over....
...China’s reaction to the exiled spiritual leader’s visit to the U.S. presidential residence, that it allowed only one official photograph of the session with Obama lecturing the holy guest and showed the Dalai Lama out the back door by the garbage bags.
The poll numbers reveal that Obama is best liked in Italy (88%), then France (86%), Spain (82%), Germany (81%) and Britain not so much (69%). Tibet was not included.
In all six countries, 88% find Obama dynamic (vs. 73% for Hillary), 90% find Obama charismatic but only 76% find him reassuring (vs. 89% for the Dalai Lama).
Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy share one distinction with the American leader: they’re all less popular at home than abroad.
Obama, however, did very well in the six-country poll compared to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the least-liked leader at 5%.
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Obama names special envoy to the Muslim world
-- Andrew Malcolm
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