Almost there...

President Bush:
"I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he said. "It may be damaged amongst some of the elite. But people still understand America stands for freedom."

I hope that we have a very different world for the next 4/8 years. I'm amazed by these ongoing political tactics, which I tend to notice more on the Republican side: 1) if a Republican throw the words "the elites" into the sentence, then it doesn't matter what the Republican did or what these mystical, always wrong "elites" think. How did they get to be elite if they are always wrong and they don't matter? So strange. 2) If you say that there is less of something, they deny that there is a change by pointing out that there is still some left. Ummm... this is arithmetic. It's not a binary world. No one is saying that 100% of the world has stopped associating America with freedom. But our reputation *has* been damaged. *Fewer* people associate America with freedom because it's not always clear that our government *will* choose "individual freedom" over "governmental control/power".

I hope the next president can avoid the "bubble", but it has always seemed to me that this president prefers the bubble. I'm not sure he would have been able to act the way he acted over the last 6 or so years without it.



Reality:
Favorable opinions of the U.S. have, in general, dropped steadily from 1999/2000 to 2006 in most of the 15 countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.