You can't generalize to an entire nation from a single experience. Americans are not stupids.
However, a friend (french) told me that he was arrested by a cop in US and that when the cop asked them about their nationality and that they answered "french", he didn't know what they were talking about, so they finally said "europe".
Concerning Bush, now that he is president, it's hard to stop him from doing what he wants (or almost), we have the same problem in France
and i suppose we are not alone.