The Economist has a good cover story about John McCain and explains quite well why Americans might elect him as president. It is a good summary for the average reader, who is not a news junkie.

Such an analysis is missing in the commentary of a Washington correspondent with the German public broadcaster ARD: Anna Engelke fails to understand McCain's appeal. Instead she makes a list of problems for McCain (his age, the bad shape of US economy, high debts and deficit, two wars) and concludes that a skilled politician like Barack Obama has to lead in the polls, if you take a "sober look at it."

She mentions only two reasons why Obama does not have a strong lead in the polls: It might be partly due to his inexperience, but it is primarily due to his black skin. Engelke opines that Obama would win this election "with the utmost probability," if he were white.

Harris Interactive:

Majorities of the public in France (68%), Spain (57%) and Germany (57%), as well as 39 percent of Italians and 35 percent of British adults consider Germany to be the "leader" of Europe. Of these European countries, Germany is considered the leader by all five. In the United States, almost two-thirds (63%) of Americans lean more towards the country they believe to be their closest partner, Great Britain, as the leader of Europe today.

I learned about this poll in the US Embassy's InfoAlert, which recommends many other interesting articles from the last two months as well, especially regarding the future of NATO.

In electing a young black politician with a Muslim father, Americans would do something that is pretty much unthinkable in any country in Europe, where politics are traditionally dominated by a white old boy's club (notable exceptions like German chancellor Angela Merkel notwithstanding). In this context, however, Europeans must not forget that Obama (despite having a very Europe-savvy foreign policy team) is not known to be an Atlanticist. Senator Clinton, for her part, has many European admirers dating back to her time in the White House with Bill, who remains a very popular figure in Europe.

Davids Medienkritik is concerned about the popularity of conspiracy theories in Germany, while ignoring their popularity in the US. Ray Drake accuses the German TV station ZDF of "fuelling the conspiracy underworld" because of the results of a totally unscientific poll on the ZDF website:

The results (with over 6,000 votes registered) indicate that 65% - or nearly two-thirds - of ZDF participants blame either George W. Bush (26%), US authorities (24%) or the nebulous and ever sinister arms lobby (15%) for 9/11. By comparison, only 27% selected Osama Bin Laden as the culprit and 9% said they didn't know.

The blog author and many of his readers make a huge fuss about it in the comment section, but Fuchur has good counter-arguments. Unfortunately, his comment did not stop other blogs from spreading Davids Medienkritik's message. Vodkapundit for instance concludes "German state media: Proud sponsor of 'Truther' nonsense." And Moonbattery has learned from the Medienkritik post that the ZDF documentary "suggests that the American government was actually behind the Muslim atrocities"

One American reader informed me about the poll via email and added "With friends like this, who needs Bin-Laden?...." Thank you very much! You are a real friend.

Why are these Americans (not all Americans) sooo harsh with Germany? Don't they know that CNN had a similar totally unscientific poll. For some reason America's "Most Trusted Name in News" interviewed the actor Charlie Sheen about 9/11 and then ran an online poll asking "Do you agree with Charlie Sheen that the U.S. government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks?" 83% of 54.000 participants answered "Yes." Conspiracy theories are at least as popular in the United States as they are in Germany.

Davids Medienkritik is popular among (neo)conservative Republican supporters. Their main concern is not Anti-Americanism, but rather criticism of conservatives. What they consider Anti-Americanism is often just leftist ideology, which is as popular in Germany as it is in the US. Therefore they do not take into consideration, that leftist conspiracy theories are at least as important in the US as in Germany. Having said that, of course there is a lot of Anti-Americanism in Germany. And Medienkritik sometimes exposes that some German media outlets stereotype Americans as obese or stupid etc.

Davids Medienkritik often calls for more diversity of opinions in the German media, but that according to another comment by Fuchur: 

To give room to these opinions [=conspiracy theories], too. Besides, how is one supposed to deal with these conspiracy theories? I don't think that ignoring them solves the problem; that's just what these people claim: The media won't talk about this, they're hiding the truth, yaddayadda. It's certainly not wrong to address these things - at least once in six years.