No matter where you fall in the political spectrum you realize that the United States is losing prestige throughout the world. The only difference is that those on the right believe it is because of Clinton and now Obama, and those on the left see it as Bush II’s fault.
The truth, however, is that it was inevitable that the prestige of the US was going to fall. The start of the fall was in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. This was the point that the US’s prestige reached its climax, and started to fall much quicker than it rose. Once the threat of attack from the USSR eased the world started to reanalyze its relationship with the US, and they all realized that they did not need the US as much as they used. This caused the world to also push back against the presumption that the US could do what it wanted, when it wanted.
This caused the Islamist militants to turn their attention to the US, as can be seen with the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. It was also shown when the world demanded that their opinion matters when the US, unilaterally (more or less), attacked Iraq. This was seen when Europe tried to use its power to restrict the US. Another example is how Obama is waffling in front of the world. He had promised to take the troops out of Iraq, but we all know now that he will stay there as long as it is needed. Also, he has decided to keep the military tribunals going, in order to place terrorists on trial. This is also seen as a loss of prestige. Then you add in the debt that both Bush II and Obama have put us in, and the one problem with that is that the lenders, like china, could call in that debt at any point.
So, if all that is added together it can be seen that no one can truly be blamed for the loss of prestige. It was an inevitability since the fall of the USSR.