Obama as the anti-Bush: World leaders already positioning themselves for a new U.S. President

[DeepModem Mom]

L.A. Times: Obama's popularity as anti-Bush is telling
His reception overseas indicates that world leaders are already looking beyond the current administration and positioning themselves for a new U.S. president.
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 26, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's electoral rival is John McCain, but Obama's overseas trip this week has given heartburn to another Republican -- President Bush. In stop after stop across the Middle East and Europe, Obama was embraced as the man whose promise of change meant a change from Bush: on Iraq, Mideast peace, the treatment of terrorism suspects, climate change, alliance relations and more.

The tour has brought into focus how world leaders already are positioning themselves for a new American president. Obama's debut appearance on the international stage was the most vivid demonstration yet that the world is moving beyond the Bush era, even while the White House works frantically in its last six months to salvage what it can of its foreign policy agenda. The trip had to come as a jolt for administration officials, said Wayne White, a senior State Department intelligence official in Bush's first term. "I'm sure it was a bit rattling for the administration to see someone treated with such deference," he said.

In Baghdad, Iraqi leaders who have appeared to be intimate allies of the White House suddenly were saying they wanted the kind of rough deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal that Obama has endorsed -- and Bush has repeatedly rejected. In Jerusalem, key leaders signaled that they could accept Obama's proposal for high-level talks with Iran, an approach that Bush labeled "appeasement" in an appearance before the Israeli parliament this spring....

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In Paris on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has gone out of his way to repair French relations with Bush, presented himself as Obama's "buddy" and said France would be "delighted" to see the Democrat elected as the next U.S. president....

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In his single appearance before a large crowd, at the Victory Column in Berlin, Obama offered a generally conciliatory message about the need for Americans and Europeans to work together on their common interests. Though his language was muted, it was still clear that he was offering himself as the un-Bush, promising a less ideological American partner who would join forces on climate change, "reject torture and stand for the rule of law," and work jointly for nuclear disarmament....Obama's speech contained a number of messages less welcome to the Germans, including that their military needs to take on a bigger and more dangerous role in Afghanistan.

Der Spiegel cautioned its readers before Obama's arrival that they might not like what they would hear from "the American idol." Yet Europeans, it said, "have fallen in love with Obama -- mostly because he's not Bush."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-bush26-2008jul26,0,3640275,full.story