George W. Bush’s eighth and last State of the Union address gave full meaning to the expression “lame-duck presidency”. The main source of comment was “the snub”: Barack Obama’s purported cold-shouldering of Hillary Clinton in the Capitol that night.

Europe, along with the rest of the world, is also looking ahead to the post-Bush era. However, it is doing so with understandable but excessive trepid­ation. From the depths of what was arguably the worst, and definitely the longest, transatlantic crisis, Europeans have reasons to welcome an America that turns its back on the perceived incompetence and mean-spiritedness of the Bush administration. There is a hope that the US will rediscover the virtues of careful diplomacy, will know who its real friends are and treat them with Jeffersonian courtesy and will return to its earlier multilateralism.