SOUTHAMPTON, United Kingdom — President Obama remains largely popular overseas, particularly in Europe — despite some deep concerns about many of his policies. So his farewell address Tuesday night — a speech in which he expressed optimism about the future of American democracy while also warning that the nation remains deeply polarized over issues ranging from race to immigration — most likely confirmed for most people here their upbeat assessment of the outgoing American president.
“I think it played well here on style, though perhaps not so much in terms of substance,” says Scott Lucas, a professor of American Studies at Britain’s University of Birmingham. Obama rattled off various accomplishments during his two terms, including the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord and taking out of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden. However, he didn’t mention issues that typically rankle Europeans, including the ongoing strife in Syria and his failure to shut down the terrorism detention center at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, widely seen as an egregious human-rights embarrassment.
What overseas residents probably appreciated about the speech was how it highlighted his personal traits that have won him fans across the world, says Mario Del Pero, a professor of international history at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. “He came across as hyper-decent and sober,” he says, and the contrast was stark on a night when the news was filled with reports over unverified claims that Russia has compiled information about compromising and salacious behavior by President-elect Donald Trump.
Europeans’ overall approval of the president, despite differences with some of his policies, was neatly summed up last weekend by Phillip Alexander, who had just bicycled to an art museum in this south coast English city. “I’ve always had a positive view of Obama,” Alexander said. Though, he quickly added, when it came to some issues — particularly not closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay — “he could have done more.” But overall, Alexander, 68, says he thinks that Obama’s been a success, and that’s reflected well on the United States. “I never expected there would be a black man as president,” he said. “That gave me a much more positive view of America.”
In many ways, Alexander’s take of the outgoing president’s eight years in office coincides with what polls and experts say is the global view of his presidency: That Obama’s personal popularity has remained intact, and that’s led to a more favorable assessment of the United States overseas. The image of the U.S. took a sharp hit during the previous administration of George W. Bush.
“The approval rating for Bush at the end of his term was around 20 percent in Europe,” Del Pero says, “and it almost immediately shot up to 80 percent with Obama. And the image of the U.S. itself was restored.”
The poll Del Pero was referring to was conducted in 2015 by the German Marshall Fund, a public policy think tank. But other recent polls also show Obama’s enduring popularity. According to a Pew Research Center survey from last June, 63 percent of Europeans have a favorable view of the U.S. And a Gallup poll taken in 132 countries and released last October found that median approval of U.S. leadership worldwide stood at 45 percent, higher than any other country, and only slightly lower than its 2009 peak of 49 percent. In the U.K., polling by YouGov last year gave Obama a 72 percent approval rating, up one point from 2015.
Bush’s presidency was marred by his prosecution of the Iraq War — now widely seen as a costly and pointless war based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — as well as his presiding over the globe-spanning Great Recession of 2008. “Bush was immensely damaging to America’s reputation,” Del Pero says.
Obama has the same kind of crowd-pleasing glow that the late President John F. Kennedy had, Lucas says. “He’s a likable guy and a good orator.” He adds, however, that as the British view of America is “changing already. I do get the impression that they no longer think that America can put things right in the world.”
At the end of the Bill Clinton administration, hope in American leadership was largely intact, only to be tarnished by Bush, Lucas says. It initially rebounded under Obama, but it’s eroding again. That’s because, Lucas says, there is a dichotomy between the Hollywood version of America, as a dynamic nation where anyone can make it, versus the more grubby reality of a country plagued by mass shootings, racism and a healthcare system that leaves too many in the breach.
One of Obama’s big foreign policy objectives was to pivot America’s economic and military priorities toward Asia and the Pacific. It’s an unfinished effort, in part because crises forced him to refocus attention on Europe and the Middle East. And he also failed to win congressional approval of what was supposed to be the pivot’s pièce de résistance: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. “The failure of the TPP, that is the big hole,” says Rosemary Foot, an expert on China and Southeast Asia at the University of Oxford.
China took a dim view of the pivot, she says. “China was clearly alarmed by it. It saw it as containment.” But elsewhere in the region, Foot adds, there was a lot of support for it, in part because Obama was the first president to take multilateralism in the region seriously. So he and his efforts remain appreciated, despite his inability to finish the maneuver.
The one area of the world where the reputation of the United States under Obama clearly tanked is in the Arab nations of the Middle East. A Pew poll from 2015 found that vast majorities of Jordanians, Palestinians, Turks and Lebanese had negative views of America.
Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, isn’t surprised. “When Obama started out, there was a lot of optimism that it would be an era of change and engagement and understanding,” she says. But when the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 began, it seemed that his response was”strong indifference,” Khatib says. “The people of the Middle East expected more support for democracy. The United States has disappointed them on a number of issues.” In particular, he’s seen as mishandling the early days of the uprising in Syria and allowing the country to descend into a bloody civil war.
The ongoing turmoil in Syria is one of the reasons why Steve Paige, 61, also of Southampton, says he’s disappointed with Obama after initially welcoming his election.
But then Paige thought for a moment and admitted that, now that Obama is exiting the world stage, “You also realize it’s been eight years and no scandals, and he faced strong opposition. I guess there is a sense of, ‘We’re really going to miss this bloke.'”
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Barack Obama Leaves Office With a Higher World View of the U.S. originally appeared on usnews.com
