Then I’m going to have to ask you for a cite (if you are saying that Reagan was more popular abroad than Carter).
Reagan certainly wasn’t more popular in Central America (think death squads), or in Western Europe (think nukes), or in the Middle East (think Lebanon), or in South America (think Pinochet, with whom Reagan normalized relations), or the Phillipines (where he cuddled up to Marcos) or Iraq (where he cuddled up to Saddam). Outside of Eastern Europe, and maybe among Iran’s mullahs (to whom he delivered arms) I’m having a hard time thinking of any place abroad where Reagan was popular. Ooh! Ooh! Maybe white South Africa (after Reagan vetoed a bipartisan Congressional attempt to impose anti-Apartheid sanctions).
Carter, on the other hand, negotiated the Camp David Accord, negotiated a return of the Panama Canal, and generally tried to follow an ethical path in foreign policy.
You’re not far off there. Clinton had enormous sex appeal among the female Thai population. Two cousins of the wife’s in particular were positively swooning when he came to town. They’d get all dreamy-eyed and keep going: “Law! Law!” (Which means “Handsome! Handsome!”)
There would have been no shortage of volunteers here had Monica Lewinsky asked for a substitute.
…and that was the start of the best night of his life.
I am surprised by the Carter answers. He is almost universally recognized as a nice guy but a terrible president here in the U.S. I don’t see why anyone internationally would have liked them unless it was for general softness and lack of threat.
That’s almost certainly a part of it - Carter was not perceived as a threat. In the US that made him look weak, because he wasn’t, um, threatening enough. But you can see why people elsewhere, particularly (at the time) in Latin America might feel happy that, just for once, the US President seemed unlikely to mess with their governments.
George Jr is probably more popular in Thailand than his father was. Thais were very lukewarm about Sr; they could take him or leave him. We’ve had our own Muslim insurgency for four years now in the deep South, by Malaysia. Daily beheadings, soldiers constantly being killed, individually and in groups. As long as ANY Muslims are being killed, and I mean ANY Muslims, the averageThai in the street seems happy. I’m still being thanked for the Iraq War. Taxi drivers in particular like to bend my ear about how “rotten” Muslims are. The local message boards are filled with plaintive wailings about why don’t we just kill ALL of the Muslims in the South. So much for peaceful Buddhists!
(The three or four southernmost provinces in the South are Muslim-majority. The people there have always been treated as third-class citizens, not being Buddhist. An insurgency has arisen about once every generation. This time around, though, elements of Jemaah Islamiyah are involved, the Southeast Asian chapter of al-Qaeda.)
Democrats are in general more popular in Europe than republicans, definitely. Since 1964, I’d say Clinton’s the winner. Of course I can’t prove it, but hey, I’ve been a fairly informed European for decades. That’s right, for decades I tell you.
Well, we quite like “lack of threat”. Clinton, perhaps, and Carter, (although not all that “memorable” in a Sellar & Yeatman sort of way) but Reagan, no, not in Britain, anyway.
I’d recommend Paris 1919 for a good read on the Paris negotiations and how Wilson was received and perceived by other allied leaders and their publics. An enormous crowd turned out in Brest to hail his arrival. His arrival in Paris was a mob scene, with the biggest crowds in living memory turning out to cheer, “Vive Wilson!” These scenes were repeated everywhere he went.
A lot of this was gratitude for American contributions to the war effort, but there really was widespread sentiment, initially, that Wilson would be able to deliver a new kind of peace. Europe had spent four years demonstrating the depths of which men were capable – with his talk of a peace based on principle of justice and open diplomacy, Wilson gave many people hope that Europe could rise above the politics that had led to the meat grinder and establish a new, fair and lasting arrangement. They wanted Germany to suffer, but they desperately wanted to never have to face another Great War again. “We Want a Wilson Peace” posters were common in France and Britain, and of course the Germans saw him as their savior. And all the aspiring new nations coming out of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire embraced his calls for national self-determination.
Unfortunately, he raised expectations so high that the when he was forced to compromise on these principles hope turned to disillusionment. Wilson himself recognized the problem when he told his aid George Creel, “What I seem to see – with all my heart I hope that I am wrong – is a tragedy of disappointment.”
