The Earth from 4 billion miles away. This picture was taken by Voyager 1 in 1991

I have always thought Angela Merkel was especially hypocritical - 'They were identified at university as having 'potential' as future leaders and a hand was stretched out to them. An American hand that said come to the US on this scholarship and see how we do things.'

Oh wait - Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany. Silly me.

And how about José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - seems as if growing up in a left wing family under Franco certainly provided him all sorts of opportunities to have an American hand stretched out to him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Luis_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Zapatero#Orig...
And he couldn't even be bothered to stand up when 'a U.S. Marine Corps honor guard carrying the American flag walked past' him (further on in the wikipedia article.)

Nonetheless, certainly there are different power centers, and different factions jockeying for power. And if you think Europeans really found the choice at the end of WWII between the U.S. of Roosevelt and Truman and the Soviet Union of Stalin hard to make, I think you might need a bit more historical clarity.

What I will certainly grant is that the U.S. was generally in a dominant position in its relations with various Western European nations in the five decades following WWII. I don't think that will be the case for the next five decades. To put it in your terms - Clinton was the end of one era, and Bush the start of another. One was a Rhodes scholar (ah, the days when imperialism truly knew no shame - nothing like naming a nation after yourself), and the other seems to be an idiot. Oh wait - an American president went to Europe to receive a helping hand? Maybe Clinton is the start of a new era, and Bush the ending of an old one.

And if Mr. Barack becomes president, we can talk about Asia, seeing as how he has some slight experience in his past in the world's largest Muslim country.