Most of what you mention are internal matters, not of great concern to most foreigners (with perhaps the exception of Canada, where a lot of you internal policies, federal or at state level, have repercussions whether economic or even socially, and thus are discussed and looked at in the media). By and large, Bush fairly or unfairly rather sort of incarnated the epitome of what people found irritating about the USA or Americans - he was the poster boy for that, almost to the point of caricature. He kind of exacerbated usually well buried feelings or prejudices even among close allied countries that have strictly no reason to antagonize or dislike the USA (such as Canada, for instance), and in countries with a real streak of anti-americanism... well, you know. I can't think of any single man who's done more than GWB to spread and expand anti-american feelings worldwide (and it's definitely not Europe only, and it goes way beyond the boundaries of "the left" (even the Democrats are considered center right or center at best in many aspects of politics in the more liberal countries - that's not what bothers foreigners). We're not particularly anti-American here (and Canadians probably know you best, what you're really like I mean - your culture is part of ours and share a lot with ours, we understand many of the various American ways of thinking and so on - a lot of us have visited many areas of the US, not to mention the place is always full of American tourists too, and many of us work with Americans a lot), but during the Bush years hating Americans, and expressing those feelings was becoming fairly common - at least after Bush's re election, when a lot of people were blaming the Americans, the only ones who could do something for real, for letting the world down by putting him back in office. Mobilizing more than a handful of people for anti-America protests was something not seen since Vietnam here, and actually the protests were bigger than those of the Vietnam years. You're a bit unfair with Obama by minimizing his efforts to correct that - economical efforts and mostly with a simple change of attitude and his personality (rather than concrete actual changes to US diplomacy) he's managed to convince at least your allies and non-enemies things had changed and it wasn't America or its people they were fed up with or hating, but the GWB administration. He aimed to present himself outside the US as a new JFK - or at least as someone with the attitude of JFK (who remains the most admired president outside the US - with near mythic status), and the world bought it. I think it's one of the things he did right, he understood perhaps much better than the average American what people abroad needed to hear from the new US president. The most virulent anti-americanism disappeared soon with his election - because of Obama, though part of the harm done to the US's reputation by Bush will probably take a generation or two to vanish and it takes less to spark anti-US comments than before Bush (and in places where you wouldn't see much of that before).

In some areas, it's much worse than that - that anti-americanism is deep and widespread, was there before Bush obviously even though his personality, his attitude and his policies made it all much worse - and it doesn't take much to make it explode again. And unlike among your allies, it's gonna to take a lot more than Obama's little changes to alter that (though I admit I find the reactions of the muslims around me, or from the city seen on the news surprisingly mild. They were much harsher during the Bush years. Most of the people interviewed were shocked and surprised by the outbreaks of violence on the one hand, and didn't especially blame the US for it. the most 'anti-american" comment we hear, and it's not anti-american per say, is a symptomatic remnant of the Bush effect, that is the local muslims are puzzled that muslims fell for such an obvious and ridiculous provocation, but they say things like "I don't understand how they can fall for that when it's so obvious this is the work of radical elements from Israel - possibly Mossad, inviting itself that way in the US presidential campaign via fringe republican elements, obviously not with the blessing or knowledge of the Republican party, just "loose cannons"radicals likely christian fundamentalists from the "moral" right acting on their own, who thought provoking the muslim world into anti-US protests would help Romney's campaign.

It's a bit too conspiracy theorist for me, though admittedly the timing of it all, with the campaign going, Obama and Romney being so close in the polls and with sept. 11 offering an opportunity, I find this far more credible than an Al-Qaeda action scenario (though it's highly likely some of the answers to the provocation are the work of terrorists rather than real mob actions). The whole thing stinks massively, in any case.