The website I chose to look at is a German news site that works alongside German news magazine Der Spiegel. After Wednesday's lectured I was intrigued to see if Obama was actually as popular in Germany as it seemed, as I noticed in the Wall Street Journal article Germans didn't appear on the list when asked whether 'America's cultural influence on the world is positive'. However 82% of the German population think that 'After the election of President Obama, America's political influence will be' positive and this article seemingly backs this point up.
The Spiegel article is focusing on the results of the Transatlantic Survey which was carried out a year after Obama became President and just three months after the Wall Street Journal article. The results state that 92% of Germans have a positive view of Obama's handling of foreign affairs compared to the 19% who a few years earlier had a positive view of Bush's handling of foreign affairs! What surprises me about these statistics is the difference one man can make on a whole country's outlook on the United States. Which begs the question do German's really love Obama or did they just want rid of Bush? Personally I believe it's the latter, Germany have never stereotypically been Anti-American like countries such as Russia but until the election of Obama they had never been overly Pro-America either.
As the article suggests there is clearly still skepticism from Germans and Europeans as a whole surrounding Afghanistan and the global economic crisis but overall Obama's presence in the American Government has done nothing but good for America's popularity in Europe. However the survey the article is based on polled 13,000 people from the U.S and 12 European countries and we are not told how many German's this includes so we do have to look at the results critically and consider that this might not be the view of every member of the German population. For example the feedback about the United States on the website Love US Hate US is mixed, not everyone loves Obama or America's foreign policy as the Spiegel article suggests.
Overall I do believe that Germany as a country have always been Pro-America and I do feel they have a more positive outlook on the United States since the election of Barack Obama, the statistics suggest this. I'm just not entirely convinced that they love him as much as the Spiegel website article is implying. However I did look round this website to try and find a negative article about American foreign policy or America in general and everything I found was more Pro-America rather than Anti-America which made me wonder, if German news magazines are continually printing articles that show America in a positive light are the German public just passively taking in all this information?
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