You may have read or heard something today about how the world views the U.S. The Pew Research Center has released its Global Attitudes Survey findings, and pundits have been quick to jump on and analyze the results, particularly as they relate to this year’s presidential contest and the two main candidates’ interpretations of where things stand. 

Among the coverage is an article attributed to Bruce Stokes, director of the Pew Research Center’s Global Economic Attitudes and published on cnn.com. Stokes presents the findings as they stack up to claims by both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney about America’s world standing. He conjectures that both are right and both are wrong.

I’ll leave it to you to read the article to learn about Obama’s and Romney’s views and decide for yourself who is more right (if it’s possible to be more right). What I want to focus on is the portion of the report that deals with the worldview of U.S. competitiveness. (more...)