Four years ago, George W. Bush delivered an inaugural address which, while eloquent, did not have an overarching theme. This was not surprising. The United States then had enjoyed a prolonged period of economic prosperity, although there were indications that this boom was ending. The country had experienced a period of comparative peace, even if terrorist attacks against US targets had been increasing. And Mr Bush had secured the White House despite winning fewer popular votes than his opponent. In such circumstances, no obvious theme dominated, and to have put one forward would have been contrived.

His second inaugural address was different. Not only was it organised around the theme of freedom, abroad and at home, but it was delivered by a president who plainly felt more comfortable with himself and the occasion than in January 2001. Mr Bush made the promotion of political liberty throughout the world and especially, by implication, in the Middle East, not only the central principle of US foreign policy but the main means by which Americans themselves would be more secure. His argument was broad, but an inauguration oration is not the place for details. His message, however, was clear. Few doubt that — events, notably in Iraq, permitting — this objective will be his lodestar in his remaining time in the White House.

In doing so, Mr Bush represents continuity and not change in the US agenda. The primacy of freedom has been articulated in different ways by presidents as diverse as Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan. Nor is this an exclusively Republican, let alone neoconservative, creed in the modern era. The vast majority of Democrats in Washington essentially agree with Mr Bush about the ends of America's mission in the world. The dispute, and it is an important one, is about the means. Senior Republicans, as well as Democrats, have suggested that the White House should amend its strategy in this second term.

To that extent, Mr Bush has quietly been inching towards his opponents. As the careful language he employed yesterday suggests, there is an appreciation that words regarded as admirably plain within the US do not travel easily. In a series of interviews Mr Bush has conceded that some of his phrases have caused unnecessary alarm overseas and resolved to be more cautious. In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Condoleezza Rice, the incoming Secretary of State, spoke of the importance of a conversation and not a monologue with the outside world and hinted that the balance between the diplomatic and the military aspects of policy would change.

This will not be a revolutionary movement. Nor will the differences between some European governments and the Oval Office disappear. The US will continue to regard the threat posed by radical Islamists, the dangers of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the behaviour of rogue states such as North Korea with more urgency than France and Germany. These countries should ask themselves whether their assessment of these perils is so much more modest because of evidence, or the inconvenience that acknowledging their intensity would entail. They might also ponder what it is about the promotion of freedom that they regard as so alien and objectionable.