Paris ? In Chile and Switzerland, White House hopeful John Forbes Kerry is drawing comparisons with another, more famous JFK. His multilingual wife is attracting attention in France and Greece. And for a British daily, it’s the haircut, stupid.

The world’s only superpower and its biggest economy: Those factors alone mean that U.S. elections are closely watched overseas. Now throw Iraq and the war on terror into the mix, and you get an election some observers believe will be scrutinized more than usual this year because of the global impact of U.S. foreign policy.

For some, the reverberations are direct. Palestinian officials, for example, are generally pessimistic that Bush will have much energy to devote to Mideast peace because he’ll be too busy campaigning. Israeli media, meanwhile, keep close tabs on candidates’ positions on the conflict with the Palestinians.

In Geneva, home to the World Trade Organization, diplomats suspect the Bush administration’s heart will not be in trade negotiations — in part because trade concessions would not sit well with voters.

And in France, stung by a chill wind blowing from the corridors of power in Washington since President Jacques Chirac said “Non!” to the U.S. war in Iraq, some hold out hope for a sunnier outlook in France-America ties if Bush is unseated.

Kerry’s name has danced across newspaper pages from Geneva to Santiago, Chile, since back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire made him an early front-runner to be the Democratic Party’s nominee.

“The new JFK who could stand up to George Bush,” Geneva daily Le Temps said of Kerry.

Aside from the initials, Chile’s La Segunda noted other parallels between Kerry and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president: both decorated war veterans, Massachusetts politicians and Roman Catholics. “JFK is not far from becoming president,” the tabloid said in a half-page profile.

For the romantic French, the tragic story of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, also is proving fascinating. Europe-1 radio devoted a chunk of an early-morning broadcast last week to the woman it called a potential first lady and the death of her first husband, Sen. John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican, in a plane crash in 1991.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is joined by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, during a campaign rally in Nashua, N.H. Many Europeans are interested in Kerry's wife but less impressed with his hairstyle.

Adding to European interest: She was born and raised in Mozambique when it was a Portuguese colony and speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian in addition to English.

A perennial fascination overseas is also the key role of money and image in U.S. politics. Even the main contenders’ hairstyles have been grist for the British left-leaning daily The Guardian.

Kerry’s style “looks half-man, half-badger,” the newspaper said, while Howard Dean’s part is “a good inch too close to his left ear” and Wesley Clark “has a faintly absurd comb-over.”