Donald Trump will tell you that he has restored America's greatness, and that the world respects us more than ever in the past. That is not even close to the truth.The rest of the world has been shocked at the current failure of leadership from the United States. They believe Trump has made the world a more dangerous place.
Here's part of how Paul Waldman puts it in The Washington Post:
It’s remarkable to think that for all the damage President Trump had done to America’s image in the world before the beginning of this year, he could wound it even further. But has he ever.
As The Post’s Rick Noack reports, people in other countries are simply gob smacked at what a terrible job the United States is doing in controlling the novel coronavirus pandemic. . . .
Trump likes to say that after he was elected, respect for the United States was restored, but the truth is precisely the opposite. Even before the pandemic, Trump couldn’t have done more to degrade America’s standing than if that was his explicit goal. Not even George W. Bush, whose disastrous invasion of Iraq drew condemnation across the globe, did as much to undermine our image abroad.
Just the fact that the United States would elect such a vulgar, ignorant, corrupt buffoon was bad enough. But now our government’s incompetence is helping cause the bodies to pile up — and, it would be reasonable for other countries to worry, potentially affecting their own efforts to contain the virus. While international travel has been drastically reduced, it won’t be shut down forever. If you were watching what’s happening in the U.S. — where we have 2.2 million cases of covid-19 and almost 120,000 deaths, more than twice as much as any other country on both counts — would you be eager to welcome U.S. visitors?
And they are watching, which highlights one of the key features of the relationship of the United States to the world. Not only is American culture global — our movies, our music, our sports — but in other countries people pay a great deal of attention to the news coming out of this country, in a way that is not at all reciprocal. . . .
While people in other countries still admire the United States, the core characteristic of this administration’s foreign policy has been retreat. Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accords, abandoned the Iran nuclear deal, walked away from the World Health Organization, and heaped contempt on NATO. He has seldom missed an opportunity to express his admiration for the world’s most brutal dictators. Even before the novel coronavirus, citizens in most countries, particularly our staunchest allies, had poor views of him
And now what does the world see? A country that has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other, with the world’s best universities and most innovative companies, failing disastrously to control a pandemic because of rampant incompetence and cronyism in its government — and that then rushes to resume normal social activities because its dumbest politicians and most idiotically selfish citizens think they should have the “freedom” to infect everyone around them. . . .
If there’s good news, it’s that should Trump lose in November, the world will celebrate with us, just as they did in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected. All the hope people everywhere invested in Obama (too much, it turned out) was magnified by the relief at being rid of Bush.
This time there will be celebrations too, not because the world sees greatness in Joe Biden, but because if Donald Trump is no longer the most powerful person on earth, things can’t help but get better. That’s a feeling everyone everywhere ought to be able to share.
