Don't expect President Obama to leave the world stage with a significant bounce.

Public opinion tracking and past presidential trips overseas leave little indication the president will return from his first extended trip abroad with more political capital at home.

Despite heavy U.S. media coverage of the president's overseas trip, there has been no significant shift in tracking polls by either Gallup or Rasmussen over the past week. Gallup's latest tracking from Saturday to Monday has Obama at a 61 percent approval rating, where he has generally remained since he left for Europe last week. Rasmussen's latest daily tracking poll also shows Obama roughly static over the past week, holding at 58 percent approval on Tuesday.

Presidents have historically returned from big trips abroad with about the same political capital as when they left, based on a RealClearPolitics review of Gallup polling before and after a dozen major presidential trips since the end of World War II. At best, some presidents bounce about 5 points in the public's view, as with Richard Nixon and George W. Bush's first overseas meetings.

Generally however, from Harry Truman at the Potsdam Conference to John F. Kennedy and later Ronald Reagan's historic speeches in Berlin, to Nixon's trip to China and Bill Clinton's trip to Europe amid scandal at home, Americans' views of presidents are largely unfazed by news of their commander-in-chief overseas.

We know that Truman's approval remained in the 80s from the summer to autumn of 1945, vaulted by the conclusion of World War II. Kennedy came into his historic West Berlin speech on June 26, 1963, with a 61 percent approval rating, where it precisely stood a month later.  Slightly less than half of Americans approved of Lyndon Johnson before he went to Vietnam in late December 1967; Americans felt the same after Johnson returned.

Like Obama, Nixon took an extended trip to Europe early in his presidency. Nixon's approval looks to have risen from 60 to 65 percent, improving his image across party lines.  Nixon's later trip to China in 1972 showed no statistically significant gain.

Jimmy Carter certainly saw no bounce from images, later regretted, of him toasting the Shah in Iran at the close of 1977. Reagan saw no bounce from his 1985 meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva. His famous Berlin Wall speech two years later may have briefly improved his image a few points to 53 percent, only for it to fizzle a week later below the 50-point mark--where Reagan began the trip.

More recently, Clinton achieved no bounce after his five-day trip from Russia to Northern Ireland in early September 1998, when still more than six in ten Americans approved of him despite scandal at home.

By mid 2006, as George W. Bush's popularity had sunk to 38 percent, Bush went abroad for two European summits that summer. Neither trip impacted his popularity. Bush's first trip abroad to Mexico, in February 2001, did likely achieve a mild 5-point bounce.

A president's inability to advance his standing at home is only one metric of his success abroad, and hardly the best one. World trips, after all, aim to improve the world's opinion of the United States (outside diplomatic substance, of course). And Americans believe Obama accomplished that aim. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that nearly eight in ten Americans believe his tour abroad has improved the world's view of the United States.

But for Obama, who returns home from Baghdad to legislative battles in Congress, his political capital will likely be no more powerful than when he left for London last week.

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