I never understood the theory that a US presidential candidate who is fawned over by European media and European policiticians, and who attracts a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin to chant his name would somehow be viewed more favorably by US voters. Isn’t that the diametrical opposite of the stereotype of the ugly American?… The lonely cowboy who doesn;t give a rip who hates or likes him, but does what he needs to do and even dies on foreign beaches if he thinks it’s necessary. I would have thought that someone like Obama who thinks he understands the bitter clinginess of small-town America would have understood that.