Eastern Europe is Unimpressed

Many thanks to curly, who linked to this Economist blog entry on European attitudes toward U.S. leadership:

The changing of the guard in Washington has had stark effect here, no surprises. But look at the figures for new EU member states:

The new Euros are much less impressed. I can only think of two explanations: either people in these countries were more favorable to Bush than those in the West, or they simply didn't perceive the change in leadership as very significant. In any event, it's a bit hard to imagine that the French are significantly more approving of U.S. leadership than the Poles.

Comments

[Ney]

Pre-Obama approval rates in most "new" EU countries were higher than in the "old" EU countries (which were near the bottom in most cases). Not so much room for a marked further increase in the new countries.