Just for fun, I was browsing a leading European daily newspaper - a really right-wing one, mind you, one whose publisher once quiped that newspapers should provide the public with healthy ideas, and left-wing ideas are not healthy...

anyway, that silliness aside, their poll question was, "Who's gonna be the next US President?"

Now you might think that the highly conversative, free-market advocates who constitute the readership of the daily would identify with republican John McCain, and perhaps have expectations that he would win, but not a chance...

Obama 80%, McCain 20%

This overwhelming anticipation of an Obama victory on the part of Europeans, despite their personal political or philosophical leanings, really does ring true to me, given my own contacts and discussions with friends and colleagues from Spain, Germany, Holland, France and elsewhere on the continent...

Why? Part of it may be the cultural differences between Europe and the US, and the much greater feeling of comfort with Obama and his style, and not with McCain and his manner of doing things. Part of it is no doubt as well the extremely low opinion Europeans have of George Bush, and by association his party and its candidate...