U.S. President George W. Bush set the tone taking his oath of office last week.

"No-one could say the inauguration speech was lacking in idealism," British Prime Minister Tony Blair Wednesday told political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

They certainly could not. Bush, who is not renowned for being a wishy-washy liberal dreamer, spoke repeatedly of the importance of ideals and idealism. There was no shortage of either in his second address from the steps of the Capitol.

He said governments faced a "moral choice between oppression, which is alway s wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right."

He talked of his administration's "ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." And he pledged to support freedom fighters in their struggle for liberty, democracy and self-determination.

"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors," he said. "When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

It was stirring stuff - the noblest of ideals driven by oratory of the highest order. Of course, this did not stop Bush's critics scoffing at his speech as phony, hypocritical and utopian.

The speech was ambitious - highly ambitious - but as Blair said in Davos, it is difficult to argue now that Bush is in the grip of neo-conservative hawks in Washington. "I thought progressives were all in favor of freedom rather than tyranny," said the president's most enthusiastic cheerleader in Europe.

Blair's political discourse has always had an evangelical ring to it, but he has often been compromised by his desire to be all things to all men and women. Lately, the Labor leader seems to have run out of patience with half-measures and there is a renewed sense of outrage and urgency in his speeches about world affairs.

Speaking to journalists at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in this up-market Swiss ski resort, Blair described the situation in Africa as "truly appalling" and a "scar on the conscience of the world." He was not alone in his indignation. French President Jacques Chirac, said poverty and disease in Africa were "morally unacceptable."

There is a growing consensus that poverty in Africa is the modern equivalent of slavery - something that is abhorrent, outdated and cannot be tolerated in a world of growing wealth and interdependence.

"If we don't tackle this problem (of poverty in Africa) , people will ask some very serious questions about the leadership of this generation," said Blair.

Sharing a stage with the British premier and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, U2 lead singer Bono went even further.

"Our generation wants to be remembered for something other than the war on terror and the Internet," he said. "We want to be remembered as the generation that eradicated stupid poverty."

Lofty rhetoric, cynics might say. Yes, but ideals that can be thrown back against leaders who have pronounced them.

If Bush sides with strongmen in China, dodgy democrats in Russia or the Saudi Royal Family during his second term, he can be held to account by those campaigning for liberty in those countries. And if Blair fails to deliver on world poverty or climate change - the other theme of his Davos speech - serious questions will be asked of his leadership.

Ideals also drive action. Development aid is r ising in most rich countries, the debts of the world's poorest states are being wiped clean and trade barriers to third world exports are slowly being dismantled. None of this goes far or fast enough to meet the U.N. Millennium Goal of halving world poverty by 2015, but they are steps in the right direction.

It is the same story with climate change. The Bush administration might have rejected the Kyoto Protocol aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but the treaty will come into effect next month.

The United States will also come under enormous pressure to sign up to concrete commitments to tackle climate change this year with Britain holding the presidency of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

Even Bush's mission to end tyranny across the world does not look as risible now as it might have done just two decades ago. At the start of the 1980s, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were ruled by dictators, a utocrats or their stooges.

Now, almost every country in these regions is a democracy of sorts. The Greater Middle East remains the exception, but even here there has been progress. Afghanistan now has a democratically elected government and Iraq holds its first elections this weekend.

It is easier to be a realist than an idealist because your dreams are less likely to be shattered. But the mark of a true leader is to be driven by ideals, not frightened by them, and to transform reality, rather than view it as an unmovable obstacle.

A special Davos edition of Newsweek this week has photos of Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt on its front cover, above the headline: "Leadership - is our generation measuring up?" Most commentators would probably answer "no," but both Blair and Bush, at their best, have proved there are still politicians who have ideals and are prepared to back them up with action.

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