The masses of people in Europe who are otherwise apolitical admire the USA and George Bush.
20 years ago American cowqboys were greatly admired by the Europeans. They were the rugged individuals who fought for liberty and self-sufficiency.
The masses of Europe will support the USA, particualrly as it becomes ever more clear that the USA were the first to recognize the true nature of the Islamofascist threat.
This is the reason why the most virulant anti-American politicians in Europe have fared the worst. While Blair has done well.
"...The masses of people in Europe who are otherwise apolitical admire the USA and George Bush. ..."
Not quite.
Need to make a delicate differential.
The Europeans in general, like the US. But they do not like Bush.
As long the US was one of the engine of the democratic development of the world, it was no problem.
But most of the Europeans don't like the single superpower configuration, a "get it alone" styile.
As the germans said regarding the Iraq conflict, the allies are not there to be told what to do, but to consult and act together.
The masses of Europa agrees with the general values what the USA represents, but not the methodes it try to impose on others.
Also, in Europe there is a dynamic connection with the arab/muslim world, and it not viewed so darkly as from the USA.
The people of the USA only know the muslims in connection the oil and 9-11 and so they draw their conclusion.
Europe builds on more than 1000 year of shared history, and judge them by that.
Tony Blair did not do well on the last election.
He lost a lot from the previous one.
He is lucky that his political opponents are absolute non-starters, so the brits had to choose between the bad and the worse.
For short: Being "anti-american" most of the times not really means that. It means mainly anti-war and anti-single-superpower.
And it is hard to deny that the war critics got it wrong completly. From a handful of die-hard AlQuaida in Afghanistan now we face few thousand battle-hardened terrorist who getting their "live" training in Iraq.
And if someone try to grill Sadddam over the Halabja attack, now he can smile back saying that it was a boys scout picnic compared to Falujah...