How much has Bush repaired US image?

As part of his quest to show the American people his world-embracing side, President Bush Friday travels for the second time in less than a month to Europe, that hotbed of anti-Bush sentiment.

After a string of recent high-profile and generally well-regarded appearances on the global stage, from commemorating D-Day at Normandy to hosting a G-8 summit and winning a new resolution on Iraq at the United Nations, the president might reasonably anticipate a better response than the adamant thumbs down he received earlier this month on the streets of Rome.

But as Mr. Bush visits Ireland to meet with European Union leaders Saturday before heading to a NATO summit in Istanbul, he shouldn't expect much newfound affection from the people, experts here and overseas say. While images of Bush swaying shoulder to shoulder around the multilateralist campfire with world leaders like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder have won the US and Bush points in some places, the president's global plummet since the war in Iraq to near-pariah status won't be easily reversed, they say.

Moreover, some experts add that what has increasingly taken hold is a divorce in the minds of many people overseas between Bush and America - between an America many foreigners profess to admire and emulate, and a president they sometimes abhor. As a case in point, protests of the Bush attendance at the EU meeting are planned by the historically pro-American Irish.

"Europeans generally have a deep appreciation of America, and it is that America they think should come back, but not Bush's America," says Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States in Paris.

"But the European public is not going to budge on Bush," he adds. "Perhaps a second term with different priorities would soften the rejection, but the nice words of the last weeks won't change the perceptions."

Still, others say Bush's efforts to show his administration's cooperative side are beginning to assuage fears about a go-it-alone superpower, even if erasing global suspicions of US motives remains an uphill task.

"We can see some uptick [in positive views of the US], but there's still an overarching condition that gives us a long way to go to get out of this hole," says Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes in Washington. "Despite some positive signs, there's still a widespread concern about the US under Bush using its military heft to its advantage."

On the positive side, Mr. Kull points to a recent survey he helped conduct with the international Globescan Inc. research firm that found a positive attitude toward America's influence in the world in a wide range of African countries. Though the survey did not delve into opinions of Bush, it found Africans giving generally positive marks for America's role in their countries, especially in the economic arena.

But it is the Iraq war that remains the prism through which much of the world is viewing the US - and viewing it negatively. That is not simply because much of Europe, for example, is antiwar, experts say, but because of the way the Bush administration decided to proceed on the war without global backing. That cemented fears that the US, as the only superpower, would now use its power as it pleased.

Page: 1 | 2