Well, as part of the international public watching this debate, I stayed up until 4:30 a.m., and I have to say there was something I didn´t understand:
When talking about the International Criminal Court, Bush said that he is going to protect and value American interests first, that´s why he would not ratificate the ICC (and probably many other international treaties, example: How to dismantle an atomic bomb - just ratificate at the CTBT for a start, Mr. President).
At the same time, the U.S.A. and the two presidential candidates and many Americans who I spoke with on my recent travel, have the opinion that the U.S. is "the leader of the free world" and has interest in fulfillig this position, like "protecting the world" (all the preemptive strike arguments, we know better than the U.N. what to do), etc.
Thing is, the majority of the world is not always going to agree with the U.S. - that´s just a plain a fact (you can see that with the disagreements about the Iraq war).
How does Bush, or the average American, want to be leader of the world to some extent, when he is not ready to ratificate international treaties like the ICC treaty? How can the Americans take the right to think they know what is the right thing for all the world? If you want to be the leader of the world, imo the foreign policy has to change drastically.
Kerry was going into the right direction, by stating that he cares about international treaties, and that the current administration has failed to sign important treaties. But Bush (and, thats one thing that has always pissed Europeans off) advocates that his decisions (which, as an American President, he has to make for the Americans - not for the rest of the world) are the right ones for the rest of the world too, because they are "just right", he knows about that (I don´t know where from, has God told him?)
Somehow I don´t get it. Where do you want to stand now? For America, or for being a kind of leader of the (democratic, free etc.) world?