When President Biden began last week’s trip through Europe that culminated in a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said a main mission was to prove the power of democracies over dictatorships: “We have to discredit those who believe that the age of democracy is over, as some of our fellow nations believe,” he said.

Which raises the question of how America is doing as a democratic model for the rest of the world. And on that front, there is some work to do. The model is tarnished—badly tarnished by some measures.

The good news, though, is that some of the old shine is still there, despite all the U.S. has done to diminish it in recent years. Indeed, the democratic model’s enduring power actually may be breaking through.

Both the short-term damage and long-term hope are on display in a remarkable survey released this month by the Pew Research Center. Pew compiled the results of interviews on perceptions of America with more than 16,000 citizens from 16 advanced economies in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

The most depressing findings are the ones showing the damage done by recent years’ vicious polarization, former President Donald Trump’s ongoing claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and the actions of the violent mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In 14 of the 16 nations surveyed, majorities of respondents said democracy in the U.S. used to be a good example, but hasn’t been in recent years. And that sentiment was nearly a majority opinion in Italy and Greece, the only countries where it fell just below 50%.

Related Video

Two themes emerged Wednesday in the meeting between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib breaks down the atmospherics and the substance from their first summit. Photo illustration: Todd Johnson The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

Astonishingly, the view that the U.S. isn’t currently a good model was highest in two countries that are among America’s closest allies, South Korea and Canada, where 73% and 69%, respectively, said the U.S. hasn’t been a good example recently. Across all the countries, fewer than two in 10 said the U.S. is currently a good example for other countries to follow.

The doubts among average citizens revealed by such numbers are more than matched by concerns harbored by leaders in countries that should want to emulate the U.S. “The elites are asking: How damaged is America from the inside? And will it be able to sustain an agenda?” says John Hamre, a former top national-security official who now is president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “When I have conversations with ambassadors or conversations with visiting foreigners, those are the questions they are asking.”

Yet the Pew survey also found a “dramatic shift” in America’s image, toward the more positive, since Mr. Biden took office. The share of foreign citizens saying they have confidence in the president to do the right thing regarding world affairs has risen to 75% overall from 17% near the end of the Trump presidency. In France, the share who say they have favorable views of the U.S. has rebounded to 65% now from a record low of 31% last year. In Japan, the rise is similar, to 71% from 41%.

Perhaps more important, Mr. Biden’s trip and his extended visits with allies implicitly illustrated one of America’s most enduring strengths: It still has real friends in a way that the authoritarians of China and Russia do not.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are both making a cottage industry out of denigrating America as a model for other nations. Mr. Putin, in fact, perfected the art of what-aboutism before and after his meeting with Mr. Biden, answering every question about Russian thuggery and abuse of his domestic opponents by throwing back observations about America’s racial divides and the insurrectionists who showed up at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Yet the reality is that neither Russia nor China has much in the way of real friendships around the world. The Russians intimidate their neighbors into acquiescence, and the Chinese use their economic power to buy ad hoc alliances, as they have with Pakistan and in Africa.

Yet as former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel points out, nobody is in the streets of foreign capitals clamoring for the adoption of a Russian or a Chinese model of authoritarian rule in their land.

By contrast, people are still clamoring for democracy. When police in Hong Kong, acting to enforce a Chinese-inspired security law, last week arrested five top editors and executives of a pro-democracy newspaper, citizens of Hong Kong lined up to buy the newspaper in a demonstration of support. The Apple Daily increased its press run fivefold to keep up with the popular demand, the Associated Press reported.

So, while U.S. politicians seem to be doing their best to diminish the American model, it may be enduring anyway.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com