Only one more week of this nonsense!

Dubya held what he (mercifully) said was his last press conference, trying to convince those who have been watching him for eight long years that he wasn't really such an abject failure. The AP report includes this passage, which begs for comment.

"...Bush particularly became indignant when asked about America's bruised image overseas. 'I disagree with this assessment, you know, that people hold America in a dim light,' he said. 'It may be damaged somewhat amongst some of the elite. But people still understand that America stands for freedom.'"

What Bush said is mostly true. But he, and the reporters questioning him, missed the point.

George W. Bush is probably the most disliked, most vilified person living on our planet. And America's image abroad has suffered mightily because of it.

I remember arriving in Quito, Ecuador, in 2003 and seeing"Fuck Bush" scrawled in huge black letters on whitewashed walls. And bicycling through France a year later, where farmers and inn-keepers and waiters would ask, incredulously, "He can't really be re-elected, can he?" And talking to decidedly non-elite people in Africa and South America and Canada during that second term, when folks who knew far more about our country than we knew about theirs would wonder if America had lost its soul.

Fortunately for us, people in other countries have suffered through crappy governments of their own. So they can pretty much understand what we have gone through in these opening years of the new century. And although they probably still believe, as Bush said, that "America stands for freedom," the abuses of the Bush-Cheney years have raised doubts.

My wife and I have wandered all over this fascinating world, and everywhere we have gone, no matter how harsh their criticisms of our government's policies, people everywhere know that our country is a special place, where hope and opportunity still abound. And the most asked question among the non-elite is: Can you help me go to America?

Folks throughout the world must marvel at the smooth transition we make from one administration to another with such divergent philosophies. Yet they share our hope, like the writers of this graffiti in Dakar, Senegal.

-By Midwest Bureau Cub Reporter Paul Knue