Nine days ago, U.S. President George W. Bush delivered his second inaugural speech, a rousing, 21-minute address in which, among other things, he extolled liberty and proclaimed "ending tyranny in our world" the ultimate goal of U.S. policy. God himself backed this policy, Mr. Bush said. Wasn't it in full accord with history's "visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty," i.e., God -- that very special friend of America's? Every day since, the White House has been busy running damage control. What went askew?

Traditionally, a presidential inaugural speech is received fairly languidly in the United States. In line with that, Mr. Bush's speech would ordinarily have been taken one of two ways. Some would have seen it as a nice example of the speechwriter's craft -- easy to listen to, elegantly phrased, competently delivered, even offering one or two truly stirring moments. "When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, 'It rang as if it meant something,' " Mr. Bush declared. "In our time it means something still." Inspiring lines, indeed, but nothing that needed to be parsed too closely.

Others would perhaps have seen it as just another serving of American political exceptionalism, an updated version of the picture of the U.S. that has been painted repeatedly by Republicans and Democrats alike: God's own country, light of the world, shining city on a hill and so on. (Wasn't it the Democrats' rising star, then-Sen.-elect Barack Obama, who at last year's party convention in Boston praised the U.S. as "a magical place, a beacon of freedom and opportunity"?)