How popular, or unpopular, is US President Donald Trump across the world? Trump has exercised American power in a way no American president has. One invaded Iraq, another Afghanistan. Vietnam, too, is from the recent past, yet no US leader changed the world order as much or shaken up the world order as Donald Trump has.
That’s why views on him across the world are significant. The changes are, too, and Pew has helped us by producing new research to understand just that. The story is in the headline: ‘Trump gets negative reviews internationally as fewer say US is a reliable partner.’ Trump is down globally, as is the US, and quite significantly.Before getting into areas where they are down and how that rating fares across countries, here’s a little story.
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Down the memory hole: This goes back to 2008, or thereabouts, when David Mulford was the US Ambassador to India. Mulford visited us at The Indian Express, where I used to work. A young person from the editorial team asked him how it felt to represent a country whose president has the lowest ratings, and is the most unpopular in his country.The US is a democracy, and the general pattern is that presidents become unpopular over time, particularly in their second term. These ratings are almost weekly. George W. Bush, who was president then, had really low ratings at that point. Mulford said, ‘Look, I know my president’s ratings are down, but I know that he gets ratings of nearly 70 percent in India.’This was also the time when, after the nuclear deal, Manmohan Singh had said to George Bush, ‘President Bush, the people of India love you dearly or greatly,’ or something like that, for which he was also criticised in India. Moral of the story? An American president can be unpopular at home, but still be popular in many parts of the world. In India, American presidents and America have been quite popular for the past 25 years.Then US President George W Bush with then PM Manmohan Singh during former’s visit to India in March 2006 | flickr/US Embassy New Delhi
