Snap Fact #358 - PUNCH BACK: President Obama is Highly Regarded Overseas; Republicans Lie That the World Hates Him.

On October 23, 2012 the BBC posted the results of a global BBC World Service poll surveying 22,000 people in 21 countries. To no one’s surprise, except Right Wing diehards who live in their Alternative Reality, the poll found a wide preference for President Obama against Governor Romney in the 2012 presidential race.

Although the President’s popularity is obvious to anyone paying attention, many people are not paying attention and we can’t assume that even intelligent voters have enough information on this issue. There are just too many rumor-mails going around that mislead their readers by saying that President Obama is widely hated overseas.

As you are about to see, this is just another 180 U-turn on the truth. The entire Right Wing, from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the top of the heap; to Rush Limbaugh and John Sununu on the bottom of the pile, will make up their “facts” as they go – and then double down on each others’ lies the next morning.    

The result of the impartial BBC’s poll give lie to the lies being perpetrated – and stunningly so!  Obama “scored 50% favorable among all respondents to Mitt Romney’s 9%. Almost a quarter, 24 percent, gave some variation of an answer that it made no difference. Only 16 percent said they didn’t know, a reminder of how closely the world follows American politics.”

One caveat is that, although the poll was worldwide and sampled most continents, there were some key countries that would have been interesting to have results from. These include Russia, Israel, and at least one Arab country.

Here is the BBC chart so you can see for yourself. With the exception of Pakistan, which is angry over U.S drone strikes on their land, and who don’t much like either candidate, every one of the other countries favored Obama over Romney, and all favored him heavily.

You can peruse the chart and see the results country by country. It is eminently clear that the world loves and respects the President of the United States, while they either don’t know who Mitt Romney is (but then who does know – he is not so sure himself) or they don’t care for him.

The BBC report notes that, “The countries where Obama leads together make up about 56.4 percent of the global population. Non-Americans sometimes joke — or gripe — that they should get a vote in U.S. presidential elections, given the winner’s potential impact on their country and sometimes individual lives. If they did, it seems likely, based on this poll, that Obama would win.”

Globescan Poll

But as important as world public opinion is to indicate how the president has pulled America’s standing up in the eyes of the world from the Bush years, the real measure of America’s resuscitated standing is the cooperation that the President has gotten from so many of the world’s governments.

The most outstanding achievement in this regard is the incredible coalition that the President has crafted against the Iranian government. Any reasonable observer would have said there was no chance that the entire civilized world would come together to put incredible pressure on the ayatollahs to end their nuclear program.

This effort may or may not work in the end. If it does work it will save a disastrous war. But whatever the outcome the President’s ability to pull together this unprecedented disparate amalgamation, unbelievably including Russia and China, is a tribute to his vision, leadership, resolve, and his ability to produce results.

Listen to all the Republican propaganda and you would think that this President is in over his head. In truth, the entire lot of them could never have pulled off what our Commander In Chief has done.