Europeans Like Bush Even Less Than Before
By SARAH LYALL
Published: May 9, 2004
nytimes.com
LONDON, May 8 - Earlier this year, George Osborne, a Conservative member of Parliament, took a straw poll of some legislators from his party. The subject was President Bush. The results were not pretty.
"George Bush scares the hell out of me," one Tory said, according to an article by Mr. Osborne in The Spectator. Another told him: "Bush is a man who might wail at the moon. I don't feel comfortable with him." A third said that while he would vote for Bush in November if he could, "I think Anglo-American relations would be better if Kerry won."
That was long before pictures showing the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners were published all over the world, horrifying even Mr. Bush's allies. And the people Mr. Osborne polled were all Conservatives, by tradition and temperament the Republican Party's natural friends across the Atlantic.
But perhaps the only surprising thing about the vehemence of anti-Bush feeling, based on a reading of newspapers, opinion polls and interviews around Europe, is how unsurprising it truly is. In fact, one reason the recent disclosures have proved so damaging to the American cause here is that Mr. Bush had so little good will upon which to draw.
Across Europe, anti-Bush feeling has contributed to a consensus that the coming American election is of singular importance: for the United States, certainly, but also for the rest of the world. Anxieties about the direction America is going are accompanied more often than not by a passionate desire, cutting across national borders and party lines, to see President Bush voted out of office in November.
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