If you want to get serious, then I will.

The poll you cited is irrelevant for a number of reasons, but NOT for the one you advance. The most obvious reason is that those people polled have no standing as US Citizens and therefore have no right to participate or even to be considered in the selction of our President. You may see that as blunt and arrogant, but it is truly as simple as that. Has nothing to do with our policies, our consideration of how others see us, or any of that stuff. Those people polled don't pay taxes here, they haven't fought and bled for this Country, and they simply haven't EARNED the right to have a say. Any one of those people have as much to say about who my President is as I have to say about who theirs is. And before you get into issues like us butting into Iraq or elsewhere, don't forget, that more often than not, Canada, England, France, Germany, Spain, and even Russia, etc. etc. are right there with us on these global geopolitical issues, trying to and influencing through economic, social, and military means.

Furthermore, you act as though just because they expressed an opinion in the poll, that they are somehow informed as to who either candidate is, or how that person really might affect US policy internationally. For starters, most of them probably know very little aside from a cursory impression formed by what they see on the 10 minute news broadcast or what they might have read in a newspaper. Heck, many in the US aren't even very well informed about the candidates other than what the press both liberal and conservative force feeds us. Also, these people polled don't KNOW what is TRULY happening in the US or what the important issues are to our citizens. They simply can't unless they live here, any more than I can know what you face everyday where you live in Canada.

And yet you imply a US arrogance at the non-consideration of the opinion of others around the world. I'd counter that it is the HEIGHT of arrogance to expect or even to demand as some imply, that the US should consider their view in picking OUR President. Perhaps if those polled internationally concentrated more on organizing efforts geared at excercising their rights and controls on thier own governments, and stopped looking to the US to fund, lead and police much of what goes on in international affairs, they would be better off, and the US could be more congenial with those governments.

For example, you cited the Kyoto Accord in a previous post. Well, regardless of whether the US participated or not, we are no longer the lead emiitter of CO2 and Greenhouse gasses. Rather than ciriticizing US for not signing, why hasn't Canada, any of the European countries, Russia, Iran, or the entire world made a workable accord to limit emissions accordingly, and held the biggest impactors, China and the rest to limiting or eliminating these emissions with or without our participation? I'd suggest it's for the same reasons the US refused to participate. Rather than lead and enact, it seems easier for others to complain about the US.

I could go on and on. But I'll leave you with this. What was the poll published in Canada about who the world wanted to win in these last elections? How about the poll published in France about who was preferred there? England? Germany? Iran? Russia?

Please provide those articles and polls and then, just maybe then, you can display some kind of international perspective toward the US that is something other than the international community asking the US to please be the example and the guy they stand behind or beside when things get tough, but at the same time saying to the US don't let that fool you into thinking we, the International Community have your back or that it's a two way street when things get tougher than each of us can stomach ourselves.