Europeans Dislike Bush Even More Than Before

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.

Europeans are in general more liberal than Americans, and among Europe's mainstream liberals, rejecting Mr. Bush is a matter of course. But a strange thing seems to have happened to many conservatives, who would ordinarily be the American president's cheerleaders. Even those who favor him seem loath to admit to wholehearted support, tempering their praise with caveats and qualifications.

Before the recent further plummet, a poll of people in nine nations conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in March found that opinion of the president and, by extension, the United States, had plummeted across Europe since Mr. Bush took office.

In France, the poll found, the president had an 85 percent negative rating; in Britain, 57 percent; in Germany 85 percent; and in Russia, 60 percent.

"Senator Kerry carries the hopes not just of millions of Americans but of millions of British well-wishers, not to mention those of nations throughout Europe and the world," The Guardian wrote. "Nothing in world politics would make more difference to the rest of us than a change in the White House."

Nick Clegg, a British Liberal Democrat who is a member of the European Parliament, said it was "difficult to exaggerate" the European hope that President Bush would lose the election - particularly in Brussels, whose multilateral ethos is mightily offended by Mr. Bush's unilateralism.

"At the moment, a consideration or analysis of Kerry's positions is pretty underdeveloped," Mr. Clegg said in an interview. "Partly, it's because it's still early days and he hasn't revealed his hand fully. But what really drives people is alarm about George Bush's policies, more than some overwhelming attraction to Kerry.

"Kerry's greatest attraction is that he's not George Bush."