The UN speech gives a hint to why the percentage of the US population that is uneasy with Mr Obama has grown steadily. The coolness that was so appealing in the campaigner is a liability in the president. Mr Obama is more comfortable analysing the international alignment of interests than in defending the particular interests of the US. In fact, to say, as he does, that “the interests of nations and peoples are shared” is to say that national interest is an illusion in the first place…

A long US tradition made it possible for Mr Obama to talk the way he did this week. Presidents Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes decked out their foreign policy in a lot of shining-city-on-a-hill rhetoric – the belief that there is no conflict between US values and the values of ordinary people round the world. This belief is false. The conclusion earlier presidents drew was that the world should follow America. We know how the world reacted. The conclusion Mr Obama draws is that America should follow the world. Americans’ reaction will not be hard to predict.