By Charles G. Hawley

Even in Europe, there is no escaping it. The United States presidential campaign is everywhere. Every tiny change in the polls wins a spot on the evening news and not a day goes by without coverage of the campaign. Academics regularly bash heads over the latest campaign intrigue and a flood of titles critical of Bush and the Iraq war dominate display tables in German bookstores. They are selling briskly.

One trend is clear: Europeans hate President George W. Bush. Moreover, they are appalled that a man many here see as responsible for much of the evil in the world has a good chance of being re-elected to the world's most powerful post next week. Most of all, however, Europeans are frustrated that, no matter how loudly they may groan, they can have no real influence on the outcome on Nov. 2.

"For the populace," the prominent German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote of the election, "there is no topic that is more exciting, infuriating, and more personally relevant -- but at the same time, they are convinced of the futility and uselessness of this agitation and they are waiting for results like a lamb going to the slaughterhouse."

The feeling in Europe is almost unanimous. In a September survey by the US-based Program on International Policy Attitudes, challenger John Kerry was the clear first choice in almost every European country. Seventy-four percent of Germans prefer him compared to just 10 percent for Bush. In France it was 64 to 5 percent. Holland: 63 to 6. And in Britain, Washington's closest ally in the war in Iraq, support for Bush's election is a mere 16 percent compared to 47 for Kerry. Only in Poland, likewise fighting in Iraq, did people support Bush -- by a margin of 31 percent to 26 percent.

And while the war in Iraq -- a war seen here as the geopolitical version of a bull in a china shop -- is a big part of Europe's disgust with Bush, he was a controversial figure from the start. His pull-out from the Kyoto Protocol, his backing away from the International Criminal Court and one unilateralist move after another set Europeans against him from the start.

Bush's post 9/11 pre-emptive strike policy and the perceived bungling of the Iraq war have only intensified such disdain. On this side of the Atlantic, most consider Bush a liar and a cynical power manipulator bent on world domination. The Abu Ghraib torture scandal merely cemented that growing suspicion. Unlikely as it may be, no small number of Europeans believe Bush is planning to invade Iran immediately following an election victory.

"Bush is representative of certain aspects of America that Europeans find threatening," Friederich Mielke, expert on transatlantic relations and syndicated author of a weekly column on the United States, told SPIEGEL INTERNATIONAL. "They feel threatened by a country that makes unilateral decisions, by arrogance of power with a lack of cultural finesse. Europeans are afraid of the radical and frightening toxic Texan."

Yet, as Mielke points out, Bush also strikes a deeper European nerve. He says that transatlantic relations, and US-Germany relations in particular, have steadily improved since the 1950s. By the time the Clinton administration ended, that relationship had developed into a true world partnership. But Bush's apparent disdain for Europe and especially Donald Rumsfeld's referral to Germany and France as "old Europe" changed all that.

"In the 1990s, we enjoyed having a relaxed and natural relationship of equals with the United States," says Mielke. "Bush has completely destroyed that. Rumsfeld has told us that we are no longer partners in leadership. The '90s were a Golden Age in German-American relations. That has been totally destroyed. We are now in the worst phase since the very end of World War II."

The European desperation for a Kerry victory is palpable. Following each of the presidential debates, European papers promptly and almost universally announced Kerry's rhetorical superiority. A survey released Wednesday showed even more forced optimism: 59 percent of Germans are betting Kerry will win.

There have also been a number of practical attempts to influence the vote. "Vote 44," a project founded in Europe and dedicated to encouraging the 525,000 Americans it estimates are living here to vote Bush out of office, has bought television spots, hung posters in cities across the continent and handed out 70 million fliers in support of Kerry. "We Europeans have a social responsibility," Matt Lahitka, founder of Vote 44 's German chapter told SPIEGEL INTERNATIONAL. "The whole world is disgusted by American politics -- the politics of ignorance, of anti-freedom and anti-United Nations. We want a change."