It's a bruising schedule: six stopovers and countless leaders in the space of a week. But does anyone really care what George Bush gets up to on his whirlwind farewell tour of Europe?
It's not that the subjects on offer are unimportant. At an EU summit in Slovenia today, the US president signed a statement covering all sorts of important issues, from Iran to Zimbabwe to climate change.
Nor will his reception be unfriendly. Among Bush's hosts this week are the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France's president, Nicholas Sarkozy - both far more amenable to the current White House than their predecessors, Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac.
The problem here is Bush himself, who, even by the usual lame duck standards of term-end presidents, is hobbling somewhat pathetically out of the limelight.
What residual authority Bush might have kept has been drained by consistently low domestic approval ratings, while the exciting battle to replace him has pushed him further from the headlines.
The trip will thus be heavy on hospitality - a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, official dinners at the Élysée Palace in Paris and, when he reaches Britain on Sunday, at Windsor Castle - but low on policy substance, despite planned press conferences with Merkel and Sarkozy.
Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, warned the press last week not to get too excited: "I don't think you're going to see dramatic announcements on this trip," he said.
One EU diplomat was far more blunt in hisanonymous comments to Germany's Der Spiegel:
In truth, the US-EU summit is only being held because it is on the schedule. Of course there are possible areas of cooperation, like climate protection. But everyone is already looking beyond the Bush era.
At least Bush still has at least one fan - his ever-loyal wife, Laura. Fresh from her personal attempt to buoy the troops in Afghanistan (from where, as this extraordinary picture shows, she travelled back in splendid isolation in a luxury trailer loaded onto a C41 transport plane), Mrs Bush has been explaining that history will judge her husband kindly:
I know he may not be that popular right now, but we've liberated two countries - 50 million people have been liberated from very brutal regimes - and I think that's really important... He's going to have a really unbelievably great legacy, with the advantage of hindsight.
