Linda Chavez, a candidate for secretary of labour with little sympathy for union strong-arm tactics, was the first casualty. Yet, Mr Bush has little to stop him, other than Democrats and possible Republican defectors in Congress, from pursuing his instincts toward a further opening up of world trade. That, of course, is a rather big "other than," but the point here is that the president himself is an internationalist who fits well into an era of economic globalisation. A good place for him to start with further trade liberalisation would be South America, which is showing serious ill effects-in Colombia, Venezuela and Argentina, especially-of Clinton administration neglect. Some foreign leaders no doubt worry about signs that George W Bush's foreign policy will be more hard-headed than Bill Clinton's. His Treasury will have less sympathy for International Monetary Fund and World Bank liberality in handing out money and advice to badly managed governments. He has been explicitly critical of the IMF'shaphazard handling of aid to Russia, including the Fund's remarkable resistance to the obvious need for tax reform. To the spin doctors of the Clinton White House, the multilateral banks, the United Nations and the capitals of various beggar nations, any criticism is "isolationist." But even a sceptical Republican Congress probably hasn't been as critical as it should have been of the multilateral agencies, considering the amount of US taxpayer money involved, and the frequent absence of tangible benefits. In what might be called pre-emptive propaganda, the same crowd has been spreading the word that the Bushites will be unsympathetic toward the poor nations of the world. They like to associate Republicans with cold, heartless capitalism, ignoring the fact that some of America's leading capitalists vote Democrat.

Moreover, the world has changed dramatically since Karl Marx was scribbling his manifestoes a century and a half ago. Then, the term "heartless capitalism" had some validity. But today, much of the world's population has experienced Marxist communism, with its mass slaughters. We learned that nothing can be more heartless than state control of economic life.

Market capitalism can be impersonal but it responds to political pressures, including those from the left. GM and IBM have people but have never sent a single soul to the gulag. As to the world's poor, the Bushite be less rhetorical about the horrors of Africa for example, but you can be sure that Secretary of State Colin Powell will be receptive to practical ideas for addressing those problems. The Bush team also will be less inclined than the Clintonites to prop up corrupt regimes which would in itself be a big favour to countries. A similar hard-headedness is on display in the Bush attitude toward national missile defence. The new administration will look at the technical options, including the use of sea-based Aegis cruisers, for the most practical way to defend the US against weapons of mass destruction.

It will have available the expertise of Secretary of Defence-designee Don Rumsfeld, who has just led a comprehensive study of the problem. What it will not do is allow the protestations of the Russians and Chinese to back it off of this national priority, knowing full well that those protests are designed to preserve the ability of those countries to conduct nuclear blackmail against the US and its friends. This unwillingness to kowtow to unfriendly powers will also be described in some circles as "isolationism."

So be it. Finally, there will be a reduced interest from Mr Bush and Mr Powell in interfering in brushfire problems, unless the vital interests of the US or the security of a friendly nation are threatened. While this too may sound heartless, it would sound more so if the record of US interventions in places like Somalia or Haiti had produced positive results.

Most haven't, so greater judiciousness is required, even if the charge, again, is "isolationism." None of this means, of course, that the administration will commit no foreign policy errors. The clear outline of foreign policy that Mr Bush sketched two years ago looks good on paper and he has selected a strong cabinet to carry it out. But partly because he will be less pliable than Bill Clinton, he will draw criticism abroad. He will continue to face a bitter battle from American protectionists. Sometimes, he will have the choice of either dumping bipartisanship or surrendering principles. At such times, he would do well to reread the speech he gave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California in November 1999.