Europe Is Waiting To Exhale

Around the world, there are hopes the next president will adopt a different style from what critics have called Bush's cowboy diplomacy and go-it-alone foreign policy, AP writes in a report about Bush "farewell tour" and his visit to the NATO Summit.

"There seems to be a great deal of enthusiasm, particularly for (Barack) Obama but also Hillary (Rodham Clinton) on the other side of the Atlantic, that there's going to be some revitalization of the trans-Atlantic partnership and we start with a clean slate and a new chapter and all the rest," said Julianne Smith, Europe program director for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I think a lot of these European countries have found a way to get past the dark shadows of 2003 and '04 when we had divides over Iraq and all the rest," she said. "And many of them are looking forward now to the next president in Washington and are already thinking about what the 2009 (NATO) summit will bring."

(from an AP article published in New York Newsday on March 29, 2008)