As George Bush starts to say goodbye (finally), our FLYPside editorial explores how a lame duck president is received abroad in his final months.

Watch our FLYPside editorial on President Bush’s farewell tour of Europe, and the surprising reception that he received.Perhaps the only surprise during President Bush’s recent farewell tour of Europe was that there were no demonstrations. No massive protests, no need to lockdown national capitals, no massed troops to keep demonstrators at great distance.

Not that the French, Germans, Italians, Irish and others who witnessed Bush’s eight day sprint across the continent have forgiven him his sins—although Pope Benedict seemed intent on doing so. Admittedly, the Pope seems to have had an ulterior motive: reportedly he is angling to make the President the next high profile political convert to Catholicism following Tony Blair’s recent baptism.

Beyond the Vatican, the lack of protest mostly signaled the European view that Bush is finally a very lame duck. They may not be ready to forgive him—but they seem ready to forgive the rest of us for electing him, now that the President has begun the long, slow process of heading back to Crawford.

That sentiment came through loudly in the new Pew Global Attitudes survey on how the U.S. is viewed around the world. Solid majorities in France, Germany, Spain, Russia and China still have negative impressions of America, along with half of the Japanese and of the British. In many cases, though, the “ugly American” animosity of the past several years has started to ebb.

But not about Bush: in 14 of 24 countries that Pew surveyed, two-thirds or more of respondents express little or no confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs. Of course, two-thirds of Americans think the same thing.

For most, the Bush era can’t end too soon. The President’s legacy is largely defined by unfinished, or—in some cases—un-started business. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rise in domestic inequality. Soaring food and energy prices. Run away health care costs. The housing depression. Tattered regulatory agencies. The lack of any serious effort to slow global warming. The list goes on…
Most of all, though, Bush’s legacy is about incompetence—think Katrina—and arrogance. Internationally, this has taken the form of absolute disdain for almost any multilateral initiative from the U.N. to the landmine treaty. Domestically it has been manifest in the astounding concentration of power in the Presidency. Neither Jimmy Carter at his weakest, nor Richard Nixon at his most imperial ever came close to Bush’s record in either regard.

The flip side of so many wishing for Bush’s term to end soon, is the enormous enthusiasm—in this country as well as abroad—about the upcoming election. Surveys show unprecedented interest in the Obama-McCain contest in countries though out the world, and an almost universal sense that, whatever the outcome, it will be better than the last eight years.

Given the state of the country today, it’s hard to disagree.