LONDON–Call it the great global grimace: even as a new trove of international surveys show the outside world leaning more than ever toward Barack Obama, U.S. polls show Americans drifting in the opposite direction.

Into the gap between diverging opinions, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland yesterday ignited an online firestorm of nearly 1,000 comments, with a screed titled, "The world's verdict will be harsh if the U.S. rejects the man it yearns for."

Writing in the left-wing British daily, Freedland described "a sinking feeling in the stomach" that the Democrats are "about to lose an election they should win.

"But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most," Freedland wrote.

"Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration.

"But if McCain wins in November, that might well change, for it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start – a fresh start the world is yearning for."

The commentary came on the heels of a new 22-country international survey showing respondents prefer Obama to Republican rival John McCain by a margin of four to one.

Kenyan respondents favoured their ancestral son by a market of 82 per cent, according to the survey of 22,000 people conducted for the BBC World Service.

One in five of those polled said a McCain presidency would improve on the Bush administrations relations with the world.

The unprecedented fascination with Obama's candidacy is especially acute in Britain, where it is served daily on the front pages, in sometimes befuddling ways. Several British reports on McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, struggled comically to define the phrase "hockey mom" to an audience that has rarely been on skates, let alone held a stick.

Other British commentators appear more mindful that rather than advancing Obama's fortunes, outside opinion may in fact be doing him damage.

A case in point is the pushback against Russell Brand, the here-today-gone-later-today face of contemporary British comedy, who outraged many as emcee at the MTV Awards when he labelled George W. Bush a "retard and cowboy" who "wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors" in Britain.

Though virtually unknown in the U.S., Brand's outburst was seized upon as red meat by the American right-wing cable outlets as yet more evidence of unsavoury international meddling.

But Brand was attacked at home as well. Writing yesterday in the Evening Standard, columnist Nick Cohen turned the tables and asked Britons how they would feel if an American comic served up similar insults in kind.

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"It's one thing to hear a fellow citizen denigrate your country, quite another for a foreigner to do the same," wrote Cohen. The transatlantic sensitivities extended yesterday as far as 10 Downing St. where officials close to Gordon Brown were forced to explain a pro-Obama article appearing under the prime minister's byline in a parliamentary magazine.

Embarrassed British government sources said the article was penned not by Brown, but by a junior Labour official, and that the text had not been cleared by the prime minister's staff prior to publication.

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