I kind of hate to bring this up, because I made an ass of myself in another thread.
I said something to effect of “clinton is the most popular overseas president in almost 2 generations”.
I promptly had my ass handed to me, and it was generally agreed that Reagan and Bush I were much more popular than Clinton. Lesson learned. So who would be the most popular president to non-americans since, say 1964?
Why 1964?
Reagan.
1964 is odd, because it’s in the middle of LBJ’s administration.
LBJ illustrates the problem in answering the question, because we foreigners didn’t know much about what he was doing with civil rights, but we did know he was responsible for the war in Vietnam. And people outside the US were deeply divided on Vietnam: there were demonstrations against the war, but there also were conservatives who strongly identified with what it meant in the struggle against communism. So some loved, and some hated LBJ, over the same issue.
In other words, they were just like the people inside the US.
I’d say Clinton beat hell out of Reagan and Nixon in Thailand. He’s a rock star! He stopped in Bangkok and gave a speech at Chulalongkorn University in November 1996, right after he was re-elected. The place was PACKED. Crowds of Thais outside wanting a glimpse. It was THE event of the semester at the uni. I was here under Reagan, too, and I never got the sense that the locals gave much thought to Reagan at all.
Vietnam, too. Clinton flew into I think it was Ho Chi Minh City for some international conference late in his presidency. The communist authorities did their damnedest to play it down. Tried to keep the publicity to a minumum. I remember Clinton even agreed to fly in at some godawful hour like 2 or 3am at the request of the authorities. They figured they could sort of sneak Clinton in. Didn’t work. Crowds formed everywhere to catch a glimpse of him. There was a great news photo of some university students reaching over from their balcony to shake hands with Clinton, who was in the next room over. Forget if that was a hotel or conference venue, but the students were on cloud nine, you could see it in their faces. They’d met The Man. It looked like they were risking falling to their deaths.
I don’t remember Reagan being popular at all in the UK at any point of his Presidency.
When people say Reagan and Bush were more popular than Clinton “overseas,” I have to wonder if maybe they’re thinking of one small part of the world. I’m here to tell you no one in Thailand gave a flip either way for Reagan OR Bush Sr.
Yeah, I was going to say - I think it depends on what part of the world you’re talking about. Clinton is more popular in Korea than any other modern American president - or at least among my generation (people in their 20s).
Eh. Depends on where you are. Lots of people in Eastern Europe are rather favorably disposed toward Reagan. I seem to recall a story when Jaromir Jagr joined the Penguins that he was a big Reagan fan.
In my travels overseas, I’ve seen many things both public and private named after President Kennedy. He might be the winner, though this would of course violate the criteria set in the OP.
I traveled some in Western Europe during the Reagan years and sensed some hostility toward him.
What gave you that idea? The huge demonstrations about stationing nuclear missiles on UK & German soil over which it was widely thought the UK & German governments would have no control, and which were perceived by many as making the UK & Germany even greater targets for nuclear annihilation? 
It has varied from country to country, of course, depending upon the broader historical context (the Cold War, most importantly) and the particular President’s policies. Reagan was hugely popular in Eastern Europe while it was under de facto Soviet control due to his anti-Communist stance, while in the UK, France and Germany, not nearly so much, because many there thought he was going to blunder into WWIII (his “We begin bombing in five minutes” quip was a much bigger deal abroad than in the U.S.).
I think, since 1964, Clinton probably takes the prize. Before then, JFK (young, hip, anti-Communist, proponent of the Alliance for Progress and a welcome change from that fuddy-duddy Ike), FDR (for his leadership during the Depression and for standing up to Hitler) and Woodrow Wilson (for helping win WWI and his anticolonial, pro-democracy approach to the Versailles Conference) were all very popular overseas in their day.
Do you have a link to this other thread. I’m curious how such a confident ass handing and general agreement came about. Why the heck would Bush I be that popular?
No cite, but I always got the impression Carter was fairly popular abroad (except in Iran). Much more so than Reagan.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you for that cite, as I seem to recall quite differently.
Violates the OP’s criteria, but if you want to look for a real rock star reception for a President overseas you probably have to go back to Woodrow Wilson. He was greeted by enormous, adoring throngs wherever he went in Europe during the Versailles peace conference. The American contribution to the war, while pretty late in the game, had been a huge morale booster for the Allies and the prospect of the enormous number of troops the US could throw into the fight helped push Germany to surrender. His Fourteen Points were widely viewed as the basis of a just and lasting peace by the citizens of both Allied and Central Power nations exhausted by the most devastating war in the history of the continent.
From what I remember, and I was a kid at the time (born 1969), but was pretty current affairs educated, Carter was not popular but wasn’t unpopular in the UK. He was subject to a degree of ribbing on comedy shows, but it was pretty good natured stuff. Reagan on the other hand was pretty much immediately seen as dangerous and dumb, both in the media and in popular impressions.
I was still in the UK for the early years of Clinton, and he seemed to be the most popular I remember (Carter on). Reagan was the darling of the college Conservative crowd, but those tossers also liked Pinochet and Botha, so I don’t consider their opinions representative.
From everything I remember reading, the population of Britain and France wanted to punish Germany for the war. “Hang the Kaiser” and all. I’m going to need an awful lot of convincing that the Fourteen Points were seen as a good thing by the British and French populations…
I was kinda surprised when, at a student debating competition in Australia in 1994, my partner and I were drawn with a Chinese team.
OK, that in itself wasn’t surprising, but they were huge fans of Richard Nixon. The topic of the debate hadn’t been about US Presidents specifically, but about heroes in general.
They told me afterwards that this was a common view in China, and that he was respected for basically starting to treat China as a civilised nation rather than an international leper.
Well clearly, the bargirls figured they were more likely to hit the jackpot with Clinton than with Reagan.