The Right-Wing's Leadership Myth (Lie)

The far-right-wingers, especially those in Congress, love to whine about how President Obama has taken the good international reputation of this country and destroyed it. They would have us believe that the people of the world no longer respect the United States because of the president's poor leadership. That is either wishful-thinking or outright lying.

The Gallup Poll has been surveying people in other nations for a few years now, and one of the questions they ask is whether those people approve or disapprove of the leadership of various countries. The chart above shows how the people have answered that question since 2007. Approximately 1,000 people were queried in 150 countries, and the survey has a margin of error of about 2.2 points.

If anything, the president has done just the opposite of what the right-wingers accuse him -- he has restored the world's opinion of leadership in the United States. Note that during the Bush administration (when the right-wing ruled ) the world opinion of U.S. leadership had dropped precipitously to only about 33% or 34% -- which meant that Germany, the entire European Union, and even China were respected more than the United States. But with the election of President Obama, the respect for U.S. leadership began to rebound and now leads those other nations at 46%.

The racist right may hate President Obama, but he's restored the respect for U.S. leadership that their last president damaged. But it's no surprise that they are once again shown to be lying. It's the one thing they are very good at.