The bad news is that America's relations with the rest of the world have deteriorated seriously over the past seven years; the good, that the situation would probably not be that hard to fix with a change of approach.

The world has lost confidence in the leadership of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Americans do not find foreigners anti-American in general even now. What they oppose are this administration's policies and its preachy approach. A new president with new cohorts, looking for cooperation based on honest listening and understanding of their positions, will be able to make a quick difference.

That is certainly not to say that packaging is all. America's leadership, in fact, is still sought in major policy areas and its power -- albeit seriously depleted by the Iraq and Afghanistan war failures -- is still an important factor in the world.

Who succeeds Mr. Bush is very important, although any new American president will initially be given a clean start by the rest of the world. Listening to what candidates of both parties are saying and what those who are legislators are doing makes it clear that there are differences among them in their likely approaches to America's foreign relations if elected.

However, it isn't clear who will emerge from either pack at this point. It will be important to some degree as they break clear to see who the principal candidates have around them in the foreign policy area. None of the candidates is a real foreign policy expert with the exception of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has taken on a number of generally successful special envoy missions, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. It is difficult to imagine at this point either of them achieving the nomination.

It is also almost pointless to try to gauge, much less vote on, a candidate's probable foreign policy posture as president based on what he says during the campaign. Who would have dreamed pre-November 2000 that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would come out of the gate hell-bent on attacking Iraq? Who would have believed that Gen. Colin Powell would have broken all his own rules about going into war without an endgame and, when it came to the crunch, enabled rather than blocked Mr. Bush from taking the United States into a costly, pointless war? Who would have guessed that Ms. Rice, specialized only in relations with the Soviet Union, would have presided over a steady deterioration in America's relationship with Russia, a country susceptible to positive relations after its change of status at the end of the Cold War?

So, probably, vote on character, credibility and whom they get their money from, not on possibly spurious promises of what foreign policy a candidate might pursue in office.

Important issues need to be fixed, whoever wins the election. One is America's dangerous reliance on oil, whether it be from the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela or Africa. This can come with another major policy emphasis -- a central quest that can revive our spirit as a country. The other is the problem, central to Middle East peace and to bad U.S. relations with Muslim states, confounding America's relations with even our closest allies -- the now non-existent Middle East peace process.

It is hard to imagine that any American leaders who wished even just to pose at being competent could have let what has happened in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship occur without taking action. But here is where it stands.

Israel now has perhaps the weakest leadership it has had in its entire 59-year history. Israelis miss former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who led them on a sometimes dangerous, but bold path. Ehud Olmert, the current prime minister, has little political support, is accused of corruption and has cancer. Waiting in the wings are uninspiring figures who have failed before, are old or are untested.

The Palestinians on the other side of the table are split by failed American policies. The Bush administration, waving the flag of democracy for the Middle East, supported the elections in the Palestinian territories. Hamas won, in free and fair elections over Fatah, our horse, which may have guaranteed its defeat. Then, instead of taking Hamas' electoral victory as a reason to work with it, based on its new democratic mandate, the United States and Israel worked together instead, unsuccessfully, to try to throttle it. The United States armed Fatah; Hamas defeated Fatah on the battlefield. Check and mate.

So now, the United States is pushing for a conference, between an Israel in political disarray and Fatah, the losing Palestinian side, with no mandate. And thus, this key issue in U.S. foreign policy continues to bleed, unaddressed. All parties know already how to negotiate out the remaining issues. But any agreement will require an active U.S. role.

For the United States to play that role it needs to end the Iraq war, to free resources and to regain credibility in the Mideast and the world. The United States will need to tell Israel to withdraw its settlers from the West Bank and give the Palestinians their state in the two-state resolution. America must tell Israel to do that, if necessary on pain of withdrawal of the $3 billion in U.S. aid it gets every year.

Then the United States must put together a peacekeeping force, with allies to include Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan. That force would be present in the West Bank and Gaza after an agreement is concluded. It would be mandated to see to it that the Palestinians respect the terms of the accord -- no rockets, no tunnels, no nothing against Israel.

Then, after that, America can try to get its own soul back by reducing its dependence on oil and attacking global warming in the process -- a new, central purpose, on the road again, forward into a battle worth fighting.