First Post: U.S. and the Latin Neighbors

Here we go on my first blog post. I will either succeed with flying colors or crash and burn in a blaze of glory. Either way, I am doing it!

I went to the Gallup website in search of an article to talk about today. Since my focus this semester is foreign policy, I was a little worried that the Gallup Polls would not have much to offer me. From what I know about them, it is fairly domestic based polling. However, there is an entire section based on foreign policy called Foreign Policy Opinion Briefing. It was the perfect place to begin the search for my first blog article. 

The Article I choose was Opinion Briefing: U.S.-Latin America Relations. With the Presidential Election getting closer and closer, we debate amongst ourselves on who should be the next President of our country. Occasionally, it is always refreshing to get a new and more unbiased perspective on the Presidential Election. This article takes a look at the approval rating of Latin American countries in 2009 and compares them to approval ratings for today. It is quit interesting what comes up.

Obama has always portrayed himself as the defender of the minorities, especially of Latino decent. Now, it seems the countries from which this group hails from are starting to lose interest in Obama and what he is doing.Nearly every country on the list has dropped in their approval rating except for Paraguay. 

When it comes to the affect domestically, we have to take these approval ratings with a grain of salt. After all, their disapproval of Obama may stem from other things (particularly foreign policy) that the typical American does not bother himself with. In an election where foreign policy will be nearly non-existent, the opinions of neighboring countries is a fresh, but not very helpful, opinion.