Remember the dark days of international travel, back when Bush/Cheney were kicking tail and taking names? When sneered at by an effeminate French waiter, we would claim “Canadian” and recite Curling statistics. We practiced using northern intonations and ending sentences with “eh?” Looking back, it was pretty ugly.

But today? Not so bad. The Pew Global Attitudes Project just released data on the perception of America by other nations. Since President Obama’s inauguration, things have been looking up. The survey of people in fifty-five nations showed better attitudes toward the United States in places as disparate as Western Europe, Africa and Latin America, even in Muslim nations.

And get this: For the first time since Pew began making the comparison, people in Turkey, Egypt, and Indonesia (each with mostly Muslim populations) expressed greater confidence in the American President than they did in Osama bin Laden. I would have loved to be a locust on the wall of his cave when bin Laden got that news! 

Now I know what some of you are thinking: big deal. After the Bush/Cheney war of terror, President Borat could have improved our image.

On the other hand, who cares what foreigners think of America? We’re American! We don’t care what others think! I fully expect to see Cheney shuffling to a microphone and grunting about “the failure of Obama foreign policy proven by terrorists and evil dictators liking us.” How can you sustain an axis of evil if the evil guys say they like you? Damn them!

Personally, I’m going to enjoy the fact that our new President is well liked abroad and that America’s image has improved dramatically. I expect it to help the US negotiate trade and security issues with nations that would not sit down with us six months ago. It certainly can’t hurt in places like Indonesia, one of the places our foreign policy experts expected could go “Afghanistan.” Thanks, President Obama. It does feel good to be an American today.