Who cares what world thinks of Sen. Obama?

Barack Obama has never been more popular. Obviously, I don’t mean here at home, where he’s been slipping in the polls for weeks — and going from heir apparent to underdog. No, I’m talking about overseas, where folks still can’t get enough of our freshman senator and his golden teleprompter.

In a new BBC poll, Obama was heavily preferred over John McCain by foreigners everywhere, from France to the Philippines, Canada to Kenya, Italy to Indonesia. Trouble for Obama is that other nations’ citizens don’t vote here. (Well, not yet anyway.) Even worse, Obama’s overseas popularity is actually off-putting to millions of American voters.

While our Hollywood stars, media members and other elites fret over what they think of us in London and Paris and Tokyo, a lot of Americans not only don’t care but also resent the fact that our actors, anchors and professors think we should.

This is America, after all. The greatest nation in history, no asterisk required. Our founders penned the Declaration of Independence, kicked out King George’s redcoats and came up with the Constitution. Two centuries into this experiment, we’re still not perfect, but we’re proud of our civilization and the freedom and prosperity it has helped bring to millions at home and abroad.

Don’t misunderstand: We like people from overseas. Nearly all of us are from overseas, if you go back far enough. We like visiting all those quaint little towns in England and Austria and elsewhere. And we love the food from all over: Italy, Mexico, China, Japan.

But, frankly, we don’t care who the fine people of, say, Berlin want as our next president. In fact, we would prefer that you all mind your own business. Elect your own presidents and prime ministers and premiers and whatever. We’ll handle choosing America’s next head honcho right here, thank you very much. (Turn it around, and I’m sure even our closest allies wouldn’t want us telling them who to elect.)

Is there a link between Obama’s foreign popularity and his stateside slump? I think so. While there are lots of other good reasons for Obama’s slide — from his textbook liberalism becoming more obvious to McCain attaching himself to Sarah Palin — I believe that, if Obama loses in November, key seeds of his defeat will be traced to his triumphant world tour in July.

By any conventional measure, Obama had an outstanding trip, with no major slipups outside an aborted visit with wounded U.S. troops.

Still, there was something unsettling about the tour, about all the meticulous staging and the adoring throngs. The trip wound up looking like, in McCain’s words, “a premature victory lap,” and Obama emerged as “the chosen one” mocked in GOP ads. Voters here were left to wonder, if Obama is this popular in Europe, what’s wrong with him?

Politics aside, global opinion is no great source of wisdom. In a worldwide poll out last week, less than half of those surveyed believed al-Qaida was behind 9/11. (No word on how many still think the world is flat.)

The late, great Lewis Grizzard once wrote a column for this paper lamenting the habit of some new Atlanta residents to begin telling the locals how to behave. As he put it, “They want to tell us how to speak, how to live, what to eat, what to think and they also want to tell us how they used to do it back in Buffalo.”

Just as folks from these parts still don’t care how they used to do it in Buffalo, most Americans don’t care how popular Obama is in Bogota, Bombay and Berlin. But please keep reminding us, all you pro-Obama pollsters and pundits. Tight as this race remains, John McCain can still use your unintended help.

Luke Boggs, an executive speechwriter, lives in Alpharetta.