Do you remember candidate Barack Obama offering his hope-and-change platitudes in front of the fake Greek columns during the Democratic convention? Or earlier pontificating at the Victory Monument in Berlin? Why didn't an old cigar-chomping Democratic pro take him aside and warn him about offending Nemesis? She is the dreaded goddess who brings divine retribution in ironic fashion to overweening arrogance.

When Barack Obama was running for President in 2008, he wanted, first and foremost, to be different from George W. Bush who was despised by a large majority of people everywhere on this planet.

Do we care what the world thinks of us? Should we? A new survey of global opinion is getting the usual respectful attention. The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed people in 57 countries and found that President Obama's approval ratings have slipped a bit among Europeans, Latin Americans, and Asians -- though he remains quite a bit more popular than George W. Bush was in his final year in office.

Newly released international opinion polls of the image of the United States bring the good news that global publics continue to view the American president and United States as a country in a favorable light.

As U.K. pundits and politicians slam the president for assigning blame to Britain over the BP oil spill disaster, a new survey shows Obama falling out of favor in Muslim nations, too.

Throughout the first year of his administration, Barack Obama felt the need to apologize for the perceived arrogance and moralizing of his predecessor. The notion of American exceptionalism was rejected, as were the clear lines of good and evil...The Obama administration initiated a new diplomacy of "mutual interest and mutual respect"...

America’s relationship with the Middle East and with the Muslim world is about more than confronting al-Qaeda, however. And it is in the realm of diplomacy that more substantial changes have occurred. Obama reached out to American enemies such as Syria and Iran, and has pressured and publicly criticized Israel...

The U.S. relationship with Azerbaijan is a crucial one at the moment... But recent months have indeed seen "serious issues" surface in the bilateral relationship—so serious that the relationship has sunk to an all-time low. The primary cause of the rift is a development between Azerbaijan’s neighbors: the Turkey-Armenia reconciliation process.