For Americans heading to Davos, recent visits to the World Economic Forum have represented a stark reminder of how much our national stock has dropped in global esteem.

Three years ago participants from other lands sent an unmistakable message: “We are furious at you for your invasion of Iraq.” Two years ago, they said: “Now we are not only angry about Iraq but also about the fact that you actually re-elected George W. Bush.”

And last year: “We are tired of waiting; we’re giving up and moving on without you.”

One hesitates to think what the message will be this coming week in Davos. A veteran correspondent for a European newspaper perhaps offered a preview in a recent phone conversation. “I have travelled all over the States and Europe and believe that America is the worst-governed nation of any advanced country,” he told me. “I also believe that under Bush, America has reached the zenith of its power. It’s downhill from here.”

By now, a good many Americans who participate at Davos nod their heads in weary resignation at some of these criticisms.

The vast majority of my countrymen are disillusioned and angry about the prosecution of the war in Iraq and we worry that the Bush Administration may stumble into a conflict with Iran.

Concerns also grow that for too many years we have failed to address looming threats such as climate change, an excessive reliance upon oil, a deteriorating healthcare system, the retirement of baby- boomers and a weak public school system. We know all these things and are frustrated at the lack of collective progress.

Yet it would be a serious mistake for the rest of the world — or, indeed, for Americans — to begin writing off the United States as world leader and as a benevolent force for good.

We have lost our way more than once in the past and have found it again. Americans are no wiser or nobler than anyone else; we have demonstrated repeatedly how easy it is for us to make wrong choices.

But somewhere in our national DNA, we have been blessed with a capacity gradually to wake up to our mistakes, put them out on the table for everyone to see and then correct them.

Some nations grow calcified, stuck in the routines of the past; America has always been young at heart, with its face toward the future. Each time we have gone off into trouble, someone also seems to arise from our citizenry with fresh, visionary leadership that helps us out.

Think of the founders in Philadelphia; think of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Otto von Bismarck once said: “God looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America.” There may be something to that.

The last time the US went through a rough patch something like this was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as we were engulfed in the flames of Vietnam, protesters crowded on to our streets and, for the first time in history, scandal forced a president to resign.

A series of chief executives, stretching from Lyndon Johnson through Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were unable to keep public confidence.

Around the world voices sprang up that the US appeared to be in decline; at home, respected figures demanded an overhaul of the Constitution, creating a European-like parliamentary system.

Then along came the most improbable of presidents, an actor from Hollywood, and within days of his inauguration, the commentators said — as they had of FDR in 1933 — “We have a leader in the White House again.”

Four years later Ronald Reagan successfully campaigned on the idea of “morning in America”. It was the declinists who were routed.

There is no certainty that the United States will snap out again now. Fareed Zakaria, a rising star within the US “commentariat”, argues that America is in danger of following the path of the crumbling British Empire.

Early in the 20th century, the British were preoccupied with winning the Boer War and keeping their colonies and did not pay enough attention to the rise of America and Germany.

Today, our President acts as if he is the mayor of Baghdad and we are not paying sufficient attention to the rise of China and India.

Still, the United States retains enormous staying power. The US percentage of the world’s GDP is little-changed today from what it was a century ago — roughly 20 per cent — even though the US population has now shrunk to less than 5 per cent of the world’s total. The US is the only nation that can project naval and air power into the Persian Gulf even as its army is pinned down in two conflicts. Of the top ten research universities in the world, still at least seven are American and arguably even more. They remain a dynamic source of breakthroughs in science and technology. More to the point, encouraging signs are emerging that at long last Americans are growing serious about reforms at home and changes in direction overseas.

Big US corporations are now enlisting in the struggle against climate change. So are evangelical preachers. Nearly 10 per cent of the graduating seniors from universities such as Harvard and Yale are volunteering for Teach for America — ready and willing to spend two years teaching in the roughest public schools. State governments from Massachusetts to California are pushing for universal healthcare.

This month, the first woman took her place as Speaker of the House of Representatives and the second black person was elected governor. Within the Democratic Party, the three hottest candidates for president in 2008 are a woman, a black and an anti-war populist.

That sound you hear is the ice cracking under the ancient regime and the emergence of a new political order.

This coming week in Davos, participants from other lands will justifiably call Americans to account for mistakes and failures of recent years. (Just as Americans will gently remind them of some of their own.)

But no one should be fooled that America’s best days are necessarily behind it — or that it cannot, once again, be a force for enormous good in the world.

• David Gergen is Professor of Public Service at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, and director of its Centre for Public Leadership. He has served as a senior adviser to four US Presidents — Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton — most recently as White House Counseler to President Clinton.

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