President Barack Obama is clearly liked overseas – adored, in many quarters.

But is he respected?

Americans bathed in glowing press coverage of his trip evidently think so, judging by results in the latest CBS-New York Times poll. By 67 percent to 18 percent – including 45 percent of Republicans – respondents said they thought world leaders do respect Obama, though 52 percent still said that the United States is not respected.

Obama made himself popular partly by emphasizing as much as possible his differences from his utterly disliked predecessor, George W. Bush.

Even though every slight and slap at Bush was interpreted by some conservative commentators as Obama’s denigrating the United States itself, some of it was legitimate. And some of it was not.

At his town hall meeting in Strasbourg, France, Obama said that “in America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role. ... There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

Well, he was puffing Europe’s “leading role,” but it’s true that, during Bush’s first term, arrogance, even derisiveness, was a common theme.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others gibed at “old Europe” and acted as though the United States – “the world’s only superpower” – could handle all the world’s problems alone and preferred to do so.