From my expatriate window on the world in London and in my contacts with foreign leaders and opinion makers I have heard an amazing amount of feedback on this presidential campaign. It seems that every foreigner has an opinion about our election, and most wish they also had a vote. I haven't seen such a level of international interest in an American election since the days when John F. Kennedy charmed the world with his youth and charisma.

Much of the interest stems from the fact that Americans have been offered a remarkable choice between an African-American, a woman and a political species that is almost as rare in current American politics - a moderate Republican. The winner, whoever that may be, will be seen (rightly or wrongly) as a break with the past.

Most of the world is clearly happy that the next president will not be Mr. Bush. Most, but not all. There are exceptions. I recently heard President Karzai of Afghanistan praise Mr. Bush for pouring men and money into the risky effort to stabilize his fragile and wretchedly poor country. I have heard equally enthusiastic support for Mr. Bush from a leading opinion maker from Kosovo - a tiny nation just carved off from Serbia whose independence is shored up by 16,000 NATO troops. Mr. Bush is also popular in parts of formerly communist Eastern Europe, which is still wary of its former Russian masters. And he has support in India, to which he gave a free pass to develop its nuclear arsenal. 

But it's the exceptions that make the rule. The rest of the world - including the people of Pakistan - a country he has given billions to strengthen its army - can't wait to see Mr. Bush leave the White House. Even the Iraqis have mixed feelings about what Mr. Bush has done for (or to) their country.

And his standing among European people is even lower than it is among Americans.

It's not surprising that despite the skyrocketing price of oil and the looming recession, foreign policy has remained a major issue in this election campaign. Americans now have almost as many misgivings about the Bush foreign policy as foreigners do. It took them a while longer to see through the White House spin, but now even the President's former press secretary, Scott McClellan, has laid bare the reality of the emperor's new clothes. His tale of White House blunders and deceits in his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception", confirms what a majority of Americans already suspected.

Unfortunately, politics and foreign policy do not mix well in today's America, so we should expect cheap shots and low blows in this campaign rather than high-minded debates about America's international role. It used to be taken for granted in the early days of the Cold War that politics stop at the water's edge. Nowadays, you have the candidates arguing about whether America should talk with its enemies, as if that were debatable. Or about whether we should pull our troops out of Iraq in "six months" or "a hundred years", as if either option was reasonable. Even when the candidates know better, or had previously expressed contrary positions, they show a disappointing tendency to say what they now think will go down well with the electorate rather than what will serve America's interests well. That goes for Obama, as much as it does for Clinton and McCain.

So what are America's real interests in the post-Bush world that the next president will inherit? How should the United States deal with seemingly intractable Iran, with resurgent Russia, with rising China,  destabilizing Pakistan, the bottomless pits of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the other challenges to an America that seems overstretched and underloved.

I will be writing about these issues in the coming weeks from my perspective as a veteran foreign correspondent, and would welcome your own thoughts on any of them. Even though the candidates sometimes talk rubbish, there should be a place for honest debate about our country's foreign policy.