It is American policies that have led to America s unpopularity. For a start, Bush could learn to get out of the way and encourage more popular and grassroots contacts.

Yet the international context, with its unforeseen events, does not suffice to explain Sarkozy s unpopularity with the French. His problem stems from the combination of his essence and style, which adds up to a brutal lack of coherence.

He might not respect the outcome of elections, but he cannot afford to ignore what the last one revealed about the depths of his regime s unpopularity. His problem is the regime s utter loss of legitimacy, which means that repression will not be enough.

In Park s eyes, abandoning the GNP simply because of the party s deepening unpopularity would show her to lack principles and trustworthiness. Her refusal to strike out on her own is probably the main reason why she continues to lead various opinion polls.

It's the last straw for a prime minister who is a pompous and embattled figure, already suffering a complete meltdown of political unpopularity Emma Thompson does her very best with this quasi Teresa May character but there's nothing much in the script to work with.

WASHINGTON, DC Barack Obama was widely considered an exciting new figure when he was first elected President of the United States in 2008. His increasing unpopularity and virtual abandonment by his own party in his second term in 2014 stems largely from that fact Expectations exceeded reality.

Yet the Berlusconi government did next to nothing to address these deficiencies, despite being the first government in Italy s history to survive a full five year electoral term. With an unassailable parliamentary majority, it could have undertaken coherent supply side reforms, even at the risk of some initial unpopularity.

The nation s unity is periodically threatened by its clerical rulers unpopularity among large sections of the population, as well as by regional and ethnic divisions, conflict and instability in its immediate neighborhood, and the hostility engendered by its regional clients and or proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

And no one should forget that, despite his campaign rhetoric and his apparent unpopularity with many immigrants, Sarkozy himself is an immigrant s son who favors bold affirmative action policies. Besides, the nomination of a woman with a North African ascent as minister of Justice made that clear from the start.

Most economists stress the superiority of the free trade model and point to the power of lobbies and interest groups to explain its unpopularity in practice. As US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has argued, trade expansion inevitably creates some losers, whose protests distract attention from the benefits of globalization.

From now on, the campaign appears set to be transformed into a classic left right struggle, but with a major difference between the two main candidates strategies. Hollande wants to turn the presidential election into a referendum on Sarkozy, who, given his unpopularity, is seeking to frame the battle in terms of values and experience.

Finally, if America wants change, why vote for a ticket that has embraced the very attitudes that gave the Bush years their character, and exemplifies some of the reasons for its unpopularity and failures, from partisan bigotry and the assault on reason and science to the America First dismissal of the opinions of the rest of mankind?

The potential charges are serious conspiring to destabilize the government that was elected last February, unlawfully removing the country s top judges in November 2007, and failing to provide adequate security to Benazir Bhutto before her assassination last December. Allying himself with the Bush administration has increased his unpopularity, especially following missile attacks by the United States in Pakistan s tribal areas.

The Great Depression of the 1930s, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, is the most obvious and worrying example that comes to mind, but the trend can be observed even in the Scandinavian countries, following banking crises there in the early 1990s. So seeking to explain, say, the rise of the National Front in France in terms of President François Hollande s personal and political unpopularity is not sensible.

Knowing the extent of his unpopularity in 2003, many believe that he was ready to leave power but needed a successor who would ensure that his legacy (and his wealth) survived. To be sure, Saakashvili became famous as Georgia s justice minister for submitting corruption charges against the Shevardnadze family, and early in his presidency was able to reclaim for the state 15 million dollars of the Shevardnadze fortune.