Bush Bad, says World

[Doug]

(CBS) Just back from Southeast Asia, President George W. Bush will travel to the Middle East this week. But wherever he goes, Bush encounters hostility.

In Southeast Asia, Bush tried very hard to win over his hosts. He played native instruments, watched native dancers and even tried on native clothes. But Bush's earthy diplomacy conducted mid-munch at the G-8 Summit in July or his unsolicited shoulder rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hasn't played well around the world.

From Britain to China, Bush is the "go-it-alone cowboy" to much of the world, leading the United States in the direction he wants, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

"He is too arrogant about the image of the U.S in the world," a young man in Beijing China told CBS White House correspondent Jim Axelrod.

The natural extension of this negative view of Bush in the eyes of the world is a negative view of the U.S. That view is not just isolated to the Muslim world, where 30 percent of Indonesians and Egyptians polled had a negative opinion of the U.S., but to 23 percent of people in Spain. Less than 50 percent of those polled in France, Germany, Russia and China had favorable opinions of the U.S.

Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Most of the rest of the world has watched us carefully, and not always trustfully, since 1945. No matter how many nations join "the nuclear club" the U.S. is the only one who has actually used them. Ask people from other countries if a given non-US nation would use the "bomb" some time in the future you get a 50-50 maybe-maybe not response. Ask those same people if the U.S. will in the future, it's 100% - "Of course. They already have."