If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.
Short and sweet: If we don't elect Barack Obama to the Presidency, the rest of the world, which has tolerated the US Federal Government's egregious manipulation of world events (most people do blame Bush, rightfully) and it's occupation of Iraq, will be thoroughly done with us.
From The Guardian UK
If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.
Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.
The world is letting us slide, more or less, because they know we Americans have been hijacked by thugs in very expensive suits and their teams of lawyers. They know this. Mush of what is called "anti-Americanism, as the author points out, is technically anti-Bush sentiment. And that sentiment has been stoked on purpose by these criminals. Team Bush has worked to alienate the world from us.
They have responded to Obama they way the have because
The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world's population, opposed the Iraq war. McCain supported it, peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11. Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod over the international system but will treat alliances and global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies.
The article focuses on whatsername and how Team McCain's choice of her has been pure calculated politics designed to force the election to NOT be about issues but the shallowness of America's preoccupation with personalities and bullshit:
Even if it's not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign manager boasts that this election is "not about the issues."
I can't believe that more than half of America thinks the rest of the world should STFU - just republicans and conservative dead-enders, which cannot be anything remotely close to a majority of this country, but even the astute ones across the pond recognize what we do. Talking about how Obama's huge popularity in Europe manages to hurt him here
Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.
You think we have problems now.
The world has given us a pass, blaming Bush like many of us - correctly - do, but, the third time's the charm: that pass WILL expire the moment McBush gets elected president.