IF THE rest of the world were allowed to vote in American presidential elections, on current numbers Donald Trump would be facing a 50-state landslide loss. A survey of global attitudes towards America released on June 29th by the Pew Research Centre shows a derisory 9% of foreign respondents expressing confidence in the presumptive Republican nominee’s ability to handle foreign affairs. Some 85% are actively sceptical. Some may argue that such worldwide polling is not that significant. For one thing, if the world had a vote, Barack Obama would probably be heading for a third term—he enjoys 77% confidence in the new Pew poll, outstripping his would-be Democratic successor, Hillary Clinton, whose number stands at 59%. That is not where the mood is in America, where Mr Obama’s overall approval ratings are ticking up a bit at the moment, but remain bad on foreign policy and on keeping an anxious public safe from Islamic terrorism and other threats.

As a broader point, foreigners tend to like American presidents who seem willing to take their interests into account—and much of Mr Trump’s success in the Republican primaries is based on declarations that he will put America first. It is also the case that foreigners often misunderstand American leaders, caricaturing their views or reducing them to cartoonish heroes or villains.

But global attitudes are not irrelevant. Even the most brilliant deal-maker in the world needs someone on the other side of the table with whom to shake hands and agree. Though Trumpian threats and swagger sometimes work, America may need foreigners to offer their consent willingly, not least when those same foreigners are being asked to endure some political or financial pain, or risk a backlash from their own publics. And—to use Trump language—the price of doing business with others rises if America’s leader is seen as a thug.

So should the Pew poll offer one more reason for Americans, and especially thoughtful Republicans, to fear their nominee as a disaster waiting to happen? Lexington was asked to speak at the launch of the Pew survey at the Atlantic Council, a think-tank, and based on nearly 20 years of reporting as a foreign correspondent, seven of them in Washington, DC, but the rest observing America from abroad, I said yes.

To simplify, foreign views of America are shaped by a a couple of big things. First, America is (still) the most powerful country on earth. That makes adversaries seethe, promotes conspiracy theories and obliges even allies to swallow their pride and rationalise their relative impotence. Second, America traditionally claims to be a force for good. Thus when America does act, foreigners do not merely have to decide whether they approve or disapprove. They must also weigh whether they think America is being hypocritical.

And here is a sign of trouble for Mr Trump. For when I watched the presidency of George W. Bush from successive postings in Beijing, Washington, DC and Brussels, I heard foreign critics levelling the following charges against him. To sketch out the caricature, Mr Bush was called a hypocritical, proudly ignorant, America-first, unilateralist bully pursuing a sectarian crusade against the Muslim world. His claims to be invading the Middle East to help liberate the Iraqi people and promote democracy were scorned, as European politicians and placard-wielding protestors alike asserted that he was bent on selfishly grabbing Arab oil. His willingness to use torture on terrorist suspects was not seen as a reluctant act of self-defence. Instead many in Europe, certainly, saw the revelations about enhanced interrogations and secret prisons as proof that America is a violent renegade power. When Mr Bush expressed sorrow about the collateral killing of innocent civilians during the war on terror, he was called a lying war criminal. The list could go on.

Here is the thing: many items on that charge-list against Mr Bush were either unfair or exaggerated. Yet every one of those Bush-era charges is one of Mr Trump’s boasts. To the extent that the property developer should be taken at face value, he tells supporters that he is an America-first unilateralist willing to ban Muslims from entry into the country because there is so much “incredible hate” in the Muslim world, and so many Muslims are “bad people”—even if he has recently sought to finesse that sectarian ban into a policy of excluding arrivals from terrorist-blighted countries.

Mr Trump derides the idea of nation-building overseas and explicitly says that America should “bomb the shit” out of enemies in the Middle East and grab their oil, spending the proceeds on American military veterans and their families. He brags that he would reintroduce waterboarding and worse, sometimes tells rallies that even if torture does not work it is in any case what terrorists deserve. As for collateral casualties, he is proud to say that he would target the families of terrorists—a war crime. In short, the caricature of America that so much of the world hated from 2001 to 2008 is Mr Trump’s pitch.