When a reporter for the German magazine Stern glimpses in Barack Obama “the ancient American tale of one single hero in the fight against the system,” or when an Arab poll respondent says he despises predatory U.S. leaders but admires ordinary Americans, both are drawing from a stock of archetypal images that dates back two centuries. The American Revolution might have cut ties with the British Empire, but it did not rid the U.S. of any number of opinionated foreigners. Even those few Old Worlders who came to compliment the civilization of the New, as Lafayette did on his triumphant return to American shores in 1825, felt themselves able to remark mainly on the relative, rather than absolute, qualities of the new nation: the republic had shown, George Washington’s old comrade noted, “progress” since he had last seen it—there had been “wonders of creation and improvement.”