Laughable.

Perhaps the funniest moment in the whole post-election glad handing is this snippet appearing today:

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told broadcaster TV2 he hoped that the president and the new Congress would find “common ground on questions about Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“The world needs a vigorous U.S.A.,” Fogh Rasmussen said.

Some also worried that Democrats, who have a reputation for being more protective of U.S. jobs going overseas, will make it harder to achieve a global free trade accord.

The accord, said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, “is very important for the future of trans-Atlantic relations.”

And in China, some feared the resurgence of the Democrats would increase tension over human rights and trade and labor issues. China’s surging economy has a massive trade surplus with the United States.

“The Democratic Party… will protect the interests of small and medium American enterprises and labor and that could produce an impact on China-U.S. trade relations,” Zhang Guoqing of the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in a report on Sina.com, a popular Chinese Internet portal.

What does this illustrate?

Basically what it comes down to is we shouldn’t point to global public opinion as a factor in determining who we vote for. While it’s nice to be popular among the nations of the world at the end of the day our government and our nation’s people should be motivated first about making our own nation a better place. Our foreign policy should never be dictated by the whims of other nations.

The global community is not beholden to US laws and restrictions and while the US may be painted out to be some lumbering and clumsy giant, the world could in fact be a lot worse off without a strong United States. Listening to government officials in China, Pakistan or France go on about how our government needs to desperately reform is more than a little ironic.

People who point to world public opinion are näive at best, and blind to the realities on the ground in many other places around the world. The fact there are people in other nations hemming and hawing about the results of the midterm election and how it will negatively affect their dealings with our country should only illustrate how we cannot be swayed by public opinion which isn’t motivated by our own best interest.

Like the man in the song sang, “You can’t please everyone so you’ve got to please yourself.”