The Economist’s online debate (‘This house believes Brand America will regain its shine’) is over, and the proposition carried pretty overwhelmingly. My modest contribution was to point out that people continued to love the USA even as they were busy dissing it, and that now, with W gone, that affection will show up strongly again. Full post in situ here, excerpt here:

It is as though people have two Brand America dials in their heads and hearts: one labelled “affection” and the other marked “disappointment”.

The last few years saw a moderate turn down of the affection dial (though not as much as is popularly believed) combined with a huge clockwise twist to the disappointment dial. America discovered, to its chagrin and naive surprise, that in the words of Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel, “This one goes to eleven.”

In fact, of course, the two dials are linked: the disappointment many people felt for America was driven and animated by their long-standing and deep-seated affection for the place. For reasons both justified and unjustified (reasonable people can disagree here), people in many quarters felt let down by America. And in the way only a jilted lover or backstabbed friend can, they pumped the pain of their unrequited love into hurt feelings and anti-American rhetoric.

Barack Obama’s election, all by itself, gave everybody from Kenyan villagers to German intellectuals just what they have been secretly craving for years: something to hang their hat on, an excuse to turn down that disappointment dial and let the music of their long-pent-up affection for America be heard again. With Mr Obama in charge, Americophilia is no longer the love that dare not speak its name.