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.

Russia and its president also are unpopular in many countries of the world. But criticisms of that nation and its leader are sharpest in Western Europe where many citizens worry about overdependence on the Russian energy supply. For instance, despite sharp declines in favorable views of the U.S. in France and Germany since 2002, Russia's image in those countries is no better. (...)
Favorable views of the U.S. are in single digits in Turkey (9%) and have declined to 15% in Pakistan. Currently, just 30% of Germans have a positive view of the U.S. – down from 42% as recently as two years ago – and favorable ratings inch ever lower in Great Britain and Canada. (...)
While opinions of Americans have fallen in most Western European countries, they remain generally positive. In every Western European country surveyed, far more people express positive opinions of Americans than they do of the U.S.; in Germany, for instance, 63% say they have a positive opinion of Americans compared with just 30% who rate the U.S. positively. In fact, in many countries, the American people get better ratings than does the U.S. generally. Latin America is a consistent exception to this rule. In this region, Americans get about the same ratings as their country; either both are mostly favorable, as in Venezuela and Peru, or both are quite low, as in Argentina.

A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed "gaps" in America's knowledge of history and current events. Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered 'Yes' to the question "Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?" That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004. Further, a majority of people couldn't identify Saudia Arabia as the country of origin of most of the 9/11 hijackers, even given the question in multiple choice format. 20% answered Iraq, while 14% believed the hijackers came from Iran.

Full numbers at Newsweek. The results of this Princeton Survey Research Associates International poll are based on telephone interviews with 1,001 adults, 18 and older, conducted June 18-19, 2007.  "Results are weighted so that the sample demographics match Census Current Population Survey parameters for gender, age, education, race, region, and population density.  The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points."

In the ranking of a thousand Americans, Germany is one of the most important international partners for the U.S. – following Great Britain, Canada and Japan. Germans, like Americans but unlike the French, care a great deal about what other nations think of them. This should cheer them up: For Americans, Germany ranks ahead of all European countries except Britain, well ahead of France or Spain and, surprisingly, even farther in front of Italy, Poland, Ireland and Greece, the countries of origin of many immigrant Americans who retain links to their native lands and support active political lobbying on their behalf. (...)
Only l5 percent of survey respondents consider themselves very or well informed about the EU, even fewer today than during the last survey in September 2005. This should be a bit worrisome for a Germany which makes the EU so central to its policy-making. Also worrisome is how much the Nazi past still afflicts the German image among Americans. When asked what the top interest about Germany is, 44 percent answered “history,” by which, clearly, they mean the Third Reich. Very few Americans (13 percent) consider Germany a reliable ally of Israel and only a third say that it has taken responsibility for what it did to Jews in the past.

Those Americans who have actually been in Germany have a far better opinion about it than those who have not.

IN COUNTRY after country, anti-Americanism is the magic potion for political weakness. If you’re the president of Upper Slovobia and your popularity is sinking, take a swig from this bottle. You’d be surprised how effective the concoction is. Countless polls, elaborate or basic, confirm that Yankee-bashing works. To name the most obvious example: Five years ago, Gerhard Schroeder, Germany’s chancellor then and Vladimir Putin’s hired hand now, refloated his political wreck of an election pumping this noxious liquefied stench.

"When you've got absolutely nothing, reach for Munich" said blogger Robert Farley, speaking about the propensity of American right-wing ideologues to use the historical analogy of Munich 1938 to punish their adversaries on the left and promote perpetual war as the only solution to geopolitical conflicts. It's always Munich 1938 in the bizarro-world of right-wing America; every perceived enemy is Hitler and every individual who advocates diplomacy over war is a Chamberlain.

When President Bush, in his second inaugural address, pledged to "support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he seemed to be speaking for the whole country. But two years later, a disillusioned American public, sobered by the war in Iraq and still fearful of more terrorist attacks here at home, is ready to settle for a less idealistic goal: protecting the United States and its vital interests. (...)
Large majorities -- including most Republicans -- reject Vice President Cheney's contention that the absence of a second attack means we are safer. Instead, they say that the threat of terrorism has increased since 2001, and they believe that the war in Iraq has made us less safe, not more. One victim of that psychology is Americans' belief in the worldwide democratic mission that Bush invoked so powerfully on Jan. 20, 2005. Now, by 58 percent to 36 percent, the voters say that "it is a dangerous illusion to believe America is superior to other nations; we should not be attempting to reshape other nations in light of our values." By an even greater proportion -- almost 3 to 1 -- they say the main goal of American foreign policy should be to protect the security of the United States and its allies, rather than the promotion of freedom and democracy.

Overall, independents have moved closer to Democratic positions on foreign policy, meaning that the Republicans' almost-automatic advantage on national security issues may be a thing of the past.

The graphic below is from Transatlantic Trends Survey of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The perception of various threats does not seem to be very different in the United States and Europe.  Certainly the differences are not so big to suggest that Europeans and Americans do not share many common interests anymore, as more and more bloggers claim these days.

In detailing the patterns and gaps between the American public and others, these books nicely complement and occasionally contradict each other. Both The Foreign Policy Disconnect and America Against the World will add grist to the mill for those who profess faith in the wisdom of crowds and doubts about the judgment of foreign policy experts. After cogitating on both books, it would be difficult for the informed reader to believe that Americans hold irrational or flighty views about foreign policy. Most Americans, on most issues, articulate what George W. Bush characterized as a "humble" foreign policy during the 2000 campaign. They want a prudent foreign policy based on security against attacks and threats to domestic well-being—though American attitudes about multilateralism remain an open question. The gaps between American attitudes and the rest of the world are overstated; the gaps between Americans and their policymakers might be understated. The biggest question—which neither of these books answers satisfactorily—is to what extent these views, and gaps between views, matter.