Electing Barack Obama president won't be enough to improve America's standing in the world (2008)

After the honeymoon: Electing Barack Obama president won't be enough to improve America's standing in the world - John Brown, theguardian.com (2008):

It is widely accepted that public diplomacy has been a major failure of the Bush administration. The direction American public diplomacy should take under a new president - Democratic or Republican - is a topic of importance in defining America's global role in the post-Bush era.

While John McCain remains associated with the unpopular 43rd president, many commentators view a Barack Obama presidency as a change to rejuvenate America's standing in the eyes of the world. As Timothy Garton Ash has written: "If 'soft power' means 'the power to attract', then Obama is the personification of American soft power." Thomas Friedman echoed this sentiment, writing in the New York Times that Obama's candidacy "has done more to improve America's image abroad than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years."

But any new administration must work under the assumption that whatever honeymoon the outside world will have with a "non-George Bush" in the White House will be short-lived. ...

The new administration should also not give overseas audiences the false hope that its arrival on the world scene will mean a sudden, drastic departure from the policies of Bush, despite his low reputation at home and abroad. The American political system, which leads presidential candidates to adopt "centrist" positions, leaves the options for restructuring American foreign policy limited. This includes Iraq, a fiasco that will take years to settle. ...