President George W. Bush said the Washington gathering of world leaders he hosted was an “important first step” toward shoring up the ailing financial system and reviving market confidence.

The Group of 20 leaders from major developed and emerging economies pledged such short-term measures as fiscal stimulus to try to keep the global economy from falling into a deep slump and promised to look at ways to tighten regulations to prevent future crises. But the summit put off the debate on bigger questions, such as how far the world should go in reshaping the financial system established at the end of World War II at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference.

Obama, a Democrat who will succeed the Republican Bush on Jan. 20, opted not to attend the G-20 summit, invoking the principle that the United States has one president at a time.

The next G-20 gathering scheduled for the end of April — when Obama will be in office — could be more significant for charting a new course for the financial system.

Obama is more aligned than Bush is with European leaders who believe the upheaval in global markets might have been avoided or at least tempered had there been better oversight and better global coordination on markets.

Analysts said Obama’s differences with Bush might have created some diplomatic awkwardness at the summit and that is one of many reasons he likely chose not to attend.

“Obama was pushing during his campaign this idea that a failure of regulation was a major factor in the ongoing crisis,” said Morris Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“There is some distance between Obama and the Europeans on regulation but their gap with Bush is much greater,” he said.

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