The Reuters collection of editorials from around the world is light on praise, as you might imagine. For me, my own negative view of Bush plummeted on 9/11 when he went MIA. At a moment when Americans around the world were looking for leadership, the coward went into hiding. As an American overseas who wasn't able to successfully get a phone line through to the US for days I was looking for leadership that day and all we got was the mayor of NY. It was the most cowardly moment and no matter how loud he yelled days later on his bullhorn, it could never make up for that pathetic day.
Onto the low lights:
"A weak leader, Bush was just overwhelmed in the job," said Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung under a headline: "The Failure." "He confused stubbornness with principles. America has become intolerant and it will take a long time to repair that damage."But besides that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
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"Goodbye to the worst president ever," it declared. "Bush was an unmitigated disaster, failing on the big issues from the invasion of Iraq to global warming, Hurricane Katrina and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
"Bush leaves a country and an economy in tatters," wrote the Sunday Times in London. It said America's national debt and unemployment nearly doubled on his watch.
Britain's Daily Mail said he entered office with a budget surplus of $128 billion but exits with a $482 billion deficit.
"He leaves the world facing its biggest crisis since the Depression, the Middle East in flames and U.S. standing at an all-time low.
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The Scottish Daily Record observed: "America is now hated in many parts of the world. Bush leaves a legacy of wars and the world economy in meltdown. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger, a man who made the world a more dangerous place while sending it to the brink of economic collapse."
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The Sydney Morning Herald complained about Bush's "singular lack of curiosity in international matters" in an editorial titled "Farewell to a flawed and unpopular commander-in-chief."
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Le Monde: "It's hard to find a historian who won't say that Bush was the most catastrophic leader the U.S. has ever known," the French daily wrote. "One success: since September 11, 2001, there was no attack on U.S. soil. But this sits alongside an interminable list of failures, starting with the war in Iraq."
Germany, ridiculed as "old Europe" by Bush's former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for opposing the Iraq invasion, took aim at Bush.
"Bush brought great misery to the world with his 'friend-or-foe' mentality," wrote Die Zeit.
Stern magazine said: "Bush led the world's most powerful nation to ruin. He lied to the world, tortured in the name of freedom and caused lasting damage to America's standing."
