The president continues to promote his agenda on climate change, Mideast peace, and world trade issues, but his influence has ebbed.
"I'm sure there will be some protests, but I think people are just looking past this guy at this point and they're interested in what comes next," said James M. Goldgeier, a Europe analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"There's no reason for any leader to give him anything because he's on the way out. You have a presidency that's losing energy, is consumed by Iraq and a president who is unpopular, in general, in Europe, and people are looking beyond him," Goldgeier said.
Bush will begin the trip tomorrow at a US-European Union summit in Slovenia. The president then travels to Germany, Italy, France, and Britain. He also will visit Northern Ireland and meet Pope Benedict at the Vatican before returning next June 16.
The weeklong farewell trip is not Bush's final goodbye to his European counterparts. He will see them again at a summit next month in Japan.
Yet as he completes the final leg of his presidency, the trip to Central and Western Europe is one of Bush's last chances to lay the groundwork for US-European relations for his successor.
The trip is not expected to yield any new deals.
Bush will ask for Europe's help in Afghanistan and push for stronger penalties against Iran to discourage Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. Europe will nudge Bush forward on a blueprint for global warming.
Talks also will touch on humanitarian aid, the food crisis, Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and economic integration of both sides of the Atlantic.
Europeans know more about McCain, a longtime senator who frequently has traveled abroad, than they do about Obama, a newcomer to the world stage.
Obama has stirred curiosity. After he clinched enough delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination, The Times of London said in an editorial that his campaign "has rekindled America's faith in its prodigious powers of reinvention - and the world's admiration for America."
