Americans have had two presidents named George Bush but after the past week's events they could be forgiven for believing that they had a third.

The first was a cautious realist who raised taxes and hesitated about removing Saddam Hussein. The second — his son — was a ferocious conservative who rode roughshod over allies to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, while fighting culture wars and slashing taxes at home.

Even before last week the second President Bush, in his final months in the Oval Office, was one whose spending policies swelled federal deficits while he pursued a policy of multilateral engagement towards North Korea and Iran and tried to restart the Middle East peace process.

Now he proposes to spend up to $1 trillion to shore up a failing industry in a type of government intervention that went out of fashion in the 1970s.

Mr Bush's officials recoil from describing the bailouts as nationalisation, insisting that they are the actions of a pragmatist who, in any other circumstances, would be loath to interfere with the market.

Indeed, he has always been less ideologically driven than his reputation might suggest. He has, for instance, expanded Medicare and pressed vainly for legislation giving legal rights to immigrant workers.

Conservative critics have swiftly denounced what they regard as another, possibly final, betrayal. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, told The Washington Post: “We have now launched big-government Republicanism. If we saw France do this, Italy do this, we would have thought it was crazy. We would have had pious speeches about the folly of bureaucrats running businesses.”

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