Change is coming to Europe - as in, for the first time in years, more Europeans than not are actually excited about the visit of a high profile U.S. politician. According to the AFP, if western Europeans were to choose between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, Obama would win in a landslide. Obama scores as high as 67 percent in Germany, while McCain is favored by just six percent in the same country.

As Obama departs for his first high profile international tour, the Democrat’s status as a political rock star is beginning to seize Europe as well. European newspapers, the AFP notes, have already called him a “John Kennedy of our time,” and political leaders in Germany and Italy “have adopted Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ slogan for their political speeches.” The new Spanish prime minister has even gone so far as to publicly endorse the American candidate - breaking the unspoken diplomatic neutrality observed during most foreign election seasons.

For many in Europe, Obama appears a fresh alternative to years of tense relations with the outgoing Bush administration, who has overseen plummeting confidence in and respect for the United States abroad. Europeans are particularly weary of U.S. military intervention overseas.

“I think there’s a pretty certain feeling on this side of the Atlantic that any Democrat would be an excellent alternative to Bush because they would be much more outward looking, listening more to European allies,” said Trevor McCrisken, associate professor of U.S. politics and international studies at Warwick University in the U.K.

In the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the concerns of such allies as France and Germany as those of “old Europe.”