By Julie Chazyn
Thursday, December 6, 2007
PARIS: Europeans seem more comfortable than Americans with the prospect of a woman or a black man becoming president of the United States, according to an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive in six countries.
Majorities of the respondents in France, Germany, Italy and Spain said they believed that the election of Hillary Clinton would have a positive effect in the United States and on America's relationships with other countries. Fewer than 30 percent of Americans themselves thought so. Europeans seemed only a little less sure about the prospect of Barack Obama as president; the American respondents were a little more confident.
The survey, conducted for the international news channel France24 and the International Herald Tribune, was carried out in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States. It polled more than 6,500 people from Nov. 1 to Nov. 14 about the importance of the 2008 U.S. presidential election and its impact on public opinion and foreign policy.
Among other findings in the survey:
Europeans are only mildly interested in the election and know little about any of the candidates except for Clinton. If they could vote, they would probably favor Clinton, followed by Obama and Rudy Giuliani. Their awareness of the other major candidates is virtually nil.
Large numbers of Europeans thought Al Gore could be a credible candidate; only 29 percent of Americans thought so.
The percentage of Europeans who thought George W. Bush has done a good job as president was a single digit in each European country, compared with 28 percent of the American respondents.
Europeans and Americans seemed to agree that the United States is a much weaker country today than at the start of the Bush administration.
In every country except Italy, the Iraq war was deemed to be the most urgent foreign policy issue facing the next president; Italians listed the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East as a higher priority.
Majorities in all countries, including America, said they believed that the United States posed a threat to world peace; 58 percent in Spain, 49 percent in France, and 48 percent in Britain and Germany said they believed that threat to be "major."
In a taped interview to be broadcast Friday evening on France24, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal was asked, in the context of the survey, about the prospect of a black American president.
"I think it is important, but we cannot exaggerate," he said. "Condoleezza Rice is black but she has not done anything extraordinary for all blacks. America is American, whether they are white, yellow or red, we have to start on that basis." Still, Wade said, a woman or a black man in the White House would mark a new chapter in America.
"In the 21st century," he said, "what will be important will no longer be the color of skin but their expertise, competence, rapidity and quickness. This is what is happening in the United States and I am not surprised. It would be an excellent thing."
That issue also interested Denis Lacorne, director of research at the Center for Studies and International Research in Paris, who teaches at the Institute of Political Studies.
"In my class I have seen a heavy emphasis on Obama," he said. "He has captured most of my students. He could be the first black president in history and they find that fascinating. He is also exotic and exciting - one of the most convincing candidates."
If the American presidency were a popularity contest driven by Europeans, Clinton would win, Obama would be the runner-up and Rudy Giuliani would come in a distant third, the survey suggests.
Forty-four percent of Germans said that of those running in the primaries, Hillary Clinton would make the best candidate for the presidency; 51 percent of Italians said she will win the presidency.
"Hillary Clinton has name recognition," Lacorne said. "Bill Clinton was liked during his presidency; we sympathized with him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Barack Obama has made international headlines and Giuliani was the mayor of New York. People know New York, they have been there, and the fact that his name rings European doesn't hurt either."
The survey questioned Americans independently of the Europeans on their choices for an American president. "If elections were held today, who would you vote for?" the poll asked its American respondents.
While 20 percent remain unsure, 25 percent of those responded said they would vote for Clinton, 15 percent for Giuliani and 13 percent for Obama. John Edwards trailed in fourth place, with 7 percent. While 5 percent would vote for Mitt Romney - in seventh place and tied with John McCain - more than 93 percent of Europeans and 41 percent of Americans are not familiar with Romney, a Republican.
According to the poll, the next president's biggest challenge is to repair the image of the United States. Fifty-eight percent of Americans and 57 percent of Britons believe the U.S. position in the world is weaker today than in 2000, at the beginning of the Bush presidency. Iraq remains at the top of the "most urgent" foreign policy issues for 33 percent of Americans and 31 percent of Germans. The second most pressing issue, as expressed by 38 percent of Italians, is the Middle East conflict.
Majorities in all countries, including the United States, said they believed that it poses a threat to world peace. More respondents in Italy (25 percent) than in America (24 percent) said they believed that America is "no threat" to peace.
Europeans overwhelmingly believe that the U.S. president should not be more than "an equal voice among all Western leaders," the survey indicates. Forty-six percent of the American respondents thought so, too, though about a third of Americans believe the president should be "the leader of the Western world."
In this fictitious popularity context, 61 percent of Italians and Germans and 42 percent of Americans would like Al Gore, who lost the 2000 American presidential election to Bush, to run for president again in 2008. Fifty-four percent of French respondents, 50 percent of Spaniards and 29 percent of Americans believe Gore could win the elections if he were to run.
Still, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, who has pressed for environment awareness, would apparently have some work to do to shed light on environmental woes. According to the poll, 63 percent of Americans, 53 percent of the French and half the British polled were not even familiar with the Kyoto Protocol.
When Harris Interactive then described the accord as "an amendment to the international treaty on climate change, assigning mandatory emission limitations for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions for countries that approve the protocol," and asked what the next U.S. president should do concerning global warming, the answer was firm:
Eighty-six percent in Germany and 85 percent in Spain and France urged approval of the protocol and a commitment on precise objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fifty-one percent of the U.S. respondents were also in that camp.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/06/america/poll.php
