Keep it up, Frenchy

Actually it's a Brit, tell us Yanks that we're courting some kind of "disaster" which I can only assume is a sternly-worded missive from the United Nations:

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

Golly, I can't think of a better way to persuade Joe Sixpack to vote for Obama than to suggest he's a backward, racist, knuckle-dragger, too provincial to understand the concerns of Paris salons. Only in the last paragraph does Jonathan Snootington-on-Avon catch a glimpse of what he's doing.

Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him.

Right ho, Jeeves! Stiff upper lip, and all that. We'll try to weather the storm of European tongue-clucking.