Roger Cohen: Europe blue, Asia red

Europe's America is blue-state America. The rest is a discomfiting blur of churches, cowboys and electric chairs.

At a deeper level, they've felt comfortable enough with a United States playing power politics, while that strut-your-stuff style has appalled consensus-driven Europeans.

I don't mean the Iraq invasion pleased Asians. It didn't. But China and India rising see the world more in terms of classic balance-of-power equations, driven by the might and self-interest of nations, than through the post-sovereign European prism of international institution-building and soft power.

Democracy at work is riveting. In Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, America has produced three remarkable candidates. It's not surprising that a recent BBC World Service global survey showed positive views of the United States increasing for the first time in years.