PROVIDENCE — Peter H. Liotta got a glimpse of what Barack Obama’s victory meant to the rest of the world on a trip to Europe in November.

As his plane landed at Orly Airport in Paris on Election Day, Nov. 4, the pilot announced over the intercom he’d just gotten word that Obama would be the next president of the United States.

“To my astonishment, the entire plane broke out in applause,” said Liotta, executive director of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, in Newport.

Liotta was happy with the election result, but it was the spontaneous show of support he witnessed on the Air France flight that overwhelmed him.

“I had tears in my eyes,” he said.

It’s no secret that Obama has touched a nerve around the world. Who can forget the crowd of 200,000 people that welcomed him at a rally in Germany before he even secured the Democratic nomination? Or the pictures of joyous Kenyans staging spontaneous celebrations after the election?

Indeed, last year, an international poll conducted by the Economist magazine showed overwhelming backing for Obama. Of the 56 countries represented by the online survey’s 52,000 respondents, only three — Algeria, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo — had a majority of support for Republican John McCain.

Foreign affairs experts in Rhode Island say the approval overseas of the president-elect has as much to do with relief that the Bush administration is coming to an end as it has with a belief in Obama and his message of change. Liotta describes it as the “anybody-but-Bush mentality.” Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee calls it a “thirst for change” in the international community.

“I think it’s important to look back at the last eight years,” said Chafee, now a visiting fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. “That’s the catapult for Obama.”

Although last Monday, at his final news conference, President Bush disagreed with those who believe that the nation’s “moral standing has been damaged,” Chafee said that it undoubtedly has. Obama’s election, he and others say, could go a long way to repair the damage to America’s image sustained over the last eight years.

Keith Brown, associate professor at the Watson Institute, says the international community is disenchanted with American foreign policy after the travails in Iraq and Afghanistan. He calls the current state of affairs an “Ugly American moment,” referring to the 1958 novel that detailed the arrogance of U.S. foreign policy and its failure to stop the spread of communism.

The book had a profound effect on John F. Kennedy’s foreign policy after he assumed the presidency in 1960, contributing to his decision to create the Peace Corps. The hope is that the country’s current negative image may galvanize Obama to revamp policy by emphasizing diplomacy, cooperation and multilateral action.

Kennedy’s election followed then Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit two years earlier to Venezuela, where hostile crowds hurled insults at him and spat at his car. Brown notes the similarities to President Bush’s visit to Baghdad in December when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at him.

So it seems that as Obama prepares to be sworn in Tuesday that America’s reputation overseas is at a nadir. Just like he is in this country, Obama is a symbol overseas of hope.

“He represents an idealized notion of possibility,” said Brown, a citizen of the United Kingdom.

Chafee says that is an important part of the global attraction to Obama. He also points to a more specific reason — Obama’s “gift for oratory.” Chafee says in particular that the crowds who came out in Berlin last July wanted to be inspired by Obama’s rhetoric.

He did not disappoint, at one point proclaiming to his cheering audience that he was not just a “proud citizen of the United States” but also “a fellow citizen of the world.”

But Chafee worries about the weight of expectation on Obama, especially as he confronts a global economic crisis and yet another conflict in the Middle East.

“We’ll see if he can live up to [the expectations],” said Chafee, who voted for Obama after disaffiliating from the Republican Party.

Brown has his own concerns. He draws a parallel between the excitement surrounding Obama to the powerful emotions stirred up when Tony Blair was elected prime minister in the U.K. in 1997. By the time he left office two years ago, Blair’s approval rating had plummeted.

“That gave me pause,” Brown said.

But Liotta believes that people here and abroad aren’t setting themselves up to be let down by the tremendous anticipation for an Obama presidency.

“I can’t think of that as anything other than an extremely positive sign,” he said.

He tells another story from his trip to Europe in the fall. One day in Rome, he kept seeing the same billboard with a photograph of Obama all over the city.

Underneath, in Italian, was written the phrase “Il Mondo Cambria.”

The translation? “The World Changes.”

akuffner@projo.com