FOUR years ago he was the Accidental President, scion of a ruling family propelled into the highest office more by genetics and duty than by political zeal and ideological mission.

Victor, sort of, after a messy constitutional scrum left him in charge of a divided nation and holding a flimsy legitimacy, this apparently callow and unengaged new President seemed to match the times. America in January 2001 was fat, happy and self-absorbed with the trivia of the post-Cold War world.

Yesterday the transformation of George W. Bush from frat-boy-made-good to solemn champion of an urgent, messianic mission to transform the world was completed.

In his second inaugural address, delivered to tens of thousands in front of a snowy Capitol building in Washington, but pointedly directed at friends and enemies around the world, President Bush dedicated himself and the next four years to no less than the ending of tyranny on Earth.

Invoking the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, and at times borrowing their rhetorical voices, Mr Bush placed the current war in Iraq, and the wider War on Terror, as the natural successor to the struggles those predecessors fought to advance liberty — the Civil War, the Second World War and the Cold War.Indeed, he promised to match or even exceed those victories.

“America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength — tested, but not weary — we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.”

Acknowledging that he and his country had been called to duty by the “day of fire” in September 2001 that woke the US from its post-Cold War torpor, Mr Bush said that the task of promoting freedom was not just some worthy ideal. It was a goal on which America’s very existence depended. “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

It was, by the standards of these occasions, an unusually one-dimensional speech. The tough battles that await him on the domestic front — reform of the tax code, of the state pension, likely appointments to the Supreme Court — merited barely a mention. Instead he concentrated on proclaiming his global mission of freedom.

His words were clearly intended as a warning to some notorious regimes that appear to be in America’s crosshairs. In the next few years the US seems likely to move towards confrontation with regimes such as Iran and North Korea.

But the President sought to allay fears that his doctrine meant permanent US engagement in wars of liberation, such as the messy struggle in Iraq. The work of promoting freedom was “not primarily the task of arms”, he said.

He insisted that the US was not seeking to impose American-style democracy and capitalism, but said that nations should be free to choose their own political systems. He told alienated European allies that he wanted to work with them.

The US would aid democracy movements and institutions all around the world, he said. It would shun governments that denied basic rights to their citizens, and encourage those that started down the path of freedom.

Of course, the ambition needs to be measured against uncomfortable reality. Mr Bush hardly touched on the difficulties that the US is having in creating basic democratic institutions in Iraq. He did not mention Iraq by name once.

Critics will note unacknowledged inconsistencies. In Pakistan, in Central and East Asia, tyrants can still get a welcome at the White House if they are on America’s side. Is Russian suppression of dissident minorities immune? Is Saudi Arabia’s treatment of its people exempt?

Indeed, a cynic might point out that some of the biggest problems that the US has had in the past four years have been not with tyrannies, but with democracies whose people were unwilling to sign on to its goals in the Middle East and beyond. These contradictions emphasise the untidy choices of real politics. The US is not about to cut all links with undemocratic regimes everywhere.

Messy compromises were not outlawed by yesterday’s ceremonial. But the tone and direction of US policy has been set and reaffirmed. And, whatever you might think about Mr Bush’s speech, you can scarcely deny its ambition.

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