PARIS -- Sen. John McCain's trip abroad - which took him from the Middle East to No. 10 Downing St. to the Elysee Palace here - was more than just a congressional fact-finding trip, or even a candidate's attempt to appear statesmanlike.
It was also an audition on the world stage for McCain in his new role as the Republican Party presidential nominee. And it offered McCain the chance to begin testing his oft-stated hope that as president he would be able to repair America's tattered reputation abroad by shifting course on some of the policies that have alienated its allies - in areas such as global warming and torture - even as he continues to embrace what much of the world sees as the most hated part of the Bush presidency: the war in Iraq.
At several stops along the trip, McCain struck a markedly different tone from that of President Bush. Bush is so unpopular, even with America's allies, that people in Britain and France told pollsters last spring that they had even less confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs than they had in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
McCain spoke in Britain and France about the need to take action to reduce global warming, a welcome stance in much of Europe, which accused Bush of doing too little in that area. And in an opinion article that ran in Le Monde and The Financial Times, McCain called for a "successor" to the Kyoto treaty on global warming, which Bush had opposed, an act that angered much of the world.
He also denounced torture and repeated his call to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that has sparked outrage around the world, writing that the United States should reach an "international understanding" about what it should do with its detainees.
"We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," McCain wrote in the article, signaling a more collaborative tone after years in which the United States has been widely criticized as conducting a headstrong, go-it-alone foreign policy. "When we believe that international action is necessary, whether military, economic or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must also be willing to be persuaded by them."
But some analysts question whether a new tone, however welcome, and the adoption of a few policies that are more in line with the rest of the world would be enough to improve America's image, given the searing unpopularity of the Iraq war - which McCain strongly supports - in much of the world.
"In terms of public opinion, I think the war in Iraq is paramount," said Nicole Bacharan, an expert on the United States at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris.
James M. Goldgeier, a political scientist who studies trans-Atlantic relations at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of McCain: "There are positions that he's taken that are very different from that of the Bush administration, and sound much better to European ears, on climate change and torture."
"But then you've got Iraq," Goldgeier added.
The precipitous decline in America's reputation abroad - after no unconventional weapons were found in Iraq and the revelations about abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, among other developments - is underscored by a series of surveys conducted overseas by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The percentage of respondents in Britain, America's strongest ally, who said they viewed the United States favorably fell to 51 percent last spring, down from 83 percent before the Iraq war began; in France it fell to 39 percent from 62 percent before the war began, said Andrew Kohut, the director of the project.
It is an issue that resonates with some voters back home; McCain is often asked on the campaign trail what he would do to restore America's reputation.
Now, as the world takes McCain's measure, one of the questions people are likely to grapple with is very much like one of the questions voters in the United States have been asking: to what extent a President McCain would represent a break from Bush's policies, and to what extent he would be the continuation of them.
Some of McCain's differences with Bush are clear; others go unspoken. McCain has traveled far more extensively than Bush had when he was elected president, and has been to all corners of the world. As a Navy officer, congressional liaison and senator, he has visited dozens of spots around the world, from Antarctica to the Arctic Circle to every nation in NATO. At nearly every stop this week, he was greeted at the formal photo-ops by local officials as an old friend; he noted Friday that his meeting here with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, was his third.
But McCain remains perhaps the biggest booster of the unpopular Iraq war (though he was critical of the Bush administration's conduct of it before last year). How he winds up being viewed abroad, as at home, will most likely depend on what happens there. At nearly every stop this week, McCain told listeners that the situation in Iraq was improving, and that "al-Qaida is on the run, but not defeated."