American politics and more so, commerce, has so built up the country that many foreigners think it ever-so-important. If people outside are obsessed with the USA, much of it is driven by the USA herself.
As for poor opinions, that's probably because the News generally everywhere, tend to focus on bad not good; at least in free countries where opinions and reports not the official ones are allowed. Most of the totalitarian ones hate the USA anyway.
Also some of the internecine, un-analytical, abusive, political snarling between Americans on sites like this must set the American Tourist Board's teeth on edge. They do not show their country in a good light at all.
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Every country and culture has its good and its bad points - the USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan, etc... Unfortunately outsiders tend to react to the bad.
Or they go by stereotypes and plain ignorance: but if the stereotypes are home-made, foreigners can be forgiven for not seeing past them.
It is not true that English civil-servants all wear bowler hats and work in Whitehall; not true that all Scots wear kilts and play the pipes; not true that the French live on cheese, frogs and wine. Nor is it true that Britain has no constitution, though even some British MPS seem to think we don't.
Nor is it true that modern Americans all live like the characters in the Dallas TV serials, that the "Wild West" was a long period of lawlessness in which a real man could shoot a revolver from the hip to kill outright at half a mile; or that the "Boson Tea Party" was an American event! Those myths were created by the USA's own film and TV trade.
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The obsession with the USA by non-Americans is one very much encouraged by Americans among starry-eyed foreigners; but unfortunately obsessions can be unhealthy and focus on the negative or simply mistaken.
