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Last year The Daily Telegraph published the results of one of those now routine opinion polls that document the British public’s rising disdain for the United States.

The poll captured all the usual antipathies towards American policies – the Iraq War, Guantanamo, Kyoto - as well as the familiar popular perceptions of modern American pathologies – a nation of overweight, gun-toting, gay-baiting, lethal-injection-loving, religious nutters. The British expressed haughty distaste for the global spread of American culture (which the Telegraph helpfully summarised for us as “fast food, popular music and Hollywood”), but right at the end, almost buried amid all the unflattering stereotypes was a remarkable finding. In answer to the question, “Would you emigrate to the United States if you could?” a staggering 19 per cent said “yes”.

Nineteen percent! One fifth of the British population would up sticks at a moment’s notice and make a new home in the odious land of ignorant, obese, environment-despoiling cowboys!

Now it’s possible that the pollsters just caught a lot of people on a very bad, grey day in Manchester or Willesden. But I rather suspect there was something quite revealing in this sharp distinction between popular perceptions about America’s image and what it might actually be like to live there.

People have always disliked American power and what might be termed the American disposition. The US was from the start a revolutionary nation animated by a sense of universal mission. When it was just another country pursuing its aims in a competitive world, this could be irritating. But when a Superpower behaves like that, a nation that can dictate the pace of world events without the need to consult others, it can be downright alarming.

Most people around the world – even those relatively well-disposed to America’s values and aims, such as Britain, let alone in culturally alien countries in the Middle East – want to see this Prometheus Bound. When it invades Iraq or asserts its right to pursue its aims unconstrained by the rules of international engagement, it invites additional resentment.

What’s more, thanks to the global media’s unrelenting diet of clichéd images of Americans, wandering through life with a Bible in one hand and a Smith and Wesson in the other, it’s easy to be conned into thinking that this is a very unprepossessing place.

But deep down, in a layer of their consciousness formed by more enduring perceptions than the last Ten O’Clock News, I think people have a sense that America is a country that, for all its faults, continues to represent something quite admirable and idealistic.

A country that promotes individual freedom, that rewards hard work, that fosters an extraordinarily productive and open system, that engenders creativity and ingenuity. Above all, a country that remains uniquely hopeful.

As Amy Chua, a Harvard law professor put it in her book “World on Fire” a few years ago, the popular attitude towards the United States can be summed up as:

“America, get out. And take me with you.”

Click here to read Cheryl Hudson's response: Missing: one American dream

A Battle of Ideas debate on "Why do people hate America?" will take place on Saturday, October 27 at 12.15

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Gerard Baker is United States Editor of The Times. He is also a columnist for The Times and Times Online