The table above (from PEW and the APSA report I blogged about earlier) shows that there is considerable variation across both time and space in how favorably publics regard the United States. There is much of interest to be explored here, especially for our political behavior audience given that PEW is very generous in making its data available for further analysis.
There is a notable Obama jump, especially in Europe but also in some other countries like Indonesia, Nigeria, and Brazil. It is not clear whether foreign publics like Americans better because they elected Obama or that they like the U.S. better because it now has a president they believe they can work with. It is also not clear what actual cooperation this will buy Obama. A clever political scientist may figure out a way to study that question.
The patterns do suggest that publics are responsive to policy. The Iraq war led to drops in support, especially in the Muslim world. In Russia, the main drop came with the Kosovo war (this is better visible in time trends that go back further). In Asian countries where the US provides strong public goods, support is pretty high. In countries where the US provided tsunami relief, support for the US went up. (One would almost suggest that interests matter, but that would be heresy in the public opinion world.)
Anyway, I think that these data are woefully underused. There is still very little interaction between the fields of political behavior and international relations. Although some good work has come out in recent years, there is still room for clever graduate students to make a real mark here.
ps. I forgot to note that the answer to this post’s question is: Kenyans