Together with the worldwide outpouring of grief ranging from mass dance tributes in a Philippines prison to an Eiffel Tower moonwalk, the death of Michael Jackson has brought an extraordinary collection of tributes from world political figures.
Two of the great heroes of the postwar world's struggle for democracy, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Kim Dae-jung of South Korea, issued statements of condolences. "We lost a hero to the world," Kim said.
The Japanese Prime Minister, Taro Aso, recalled admiring his tapdancing skills, and Britain's Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, said he had played Jackson's Billie Jean as the first dance at his civil union.
Most surprising was that the implacable enemy of all things American, Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, although criticising an excess of media coverage, nonetheless called the death "lamentable news".
This remarkable moment of worldwide political and popular unity is a reminder of the immensity of American soft power, a dimension of US influence severely damaged by eight years of George Bush.
What is soft power? The man who developed the concept, Joe Nye of Harvard University, explains: "Hard power is the ability to coerce others by using carrots or sticks as either bribes or threats. But soft power is the ability to get what we want by attracting others, by getting them to want the things we want.
"If I can get what I want because you want it too, it saves me a lot of carrots and sticks," is how Nye put it to the BBC. It includes the power of culture, of values, of example, of desirability. The marketers of designer brands understand the value of the concept because it is the basis of their incomes.
It may be soft power, but it is not limp. Nye, who worked as a defence official in the Clinton administration, again: "During the Cold War, military containment prevented Soviet expansion, but the real victory was the transformation of the cultures behind the Iron Curtain by their attraction to Western values. So soft power was essentially the transformative force."
Since Nye first wrote about the concept in 1990 it has been embraced by the Chinese regime, which has long pursued ideas of marshalling China's "comprehensive power" to amplify its influence in world affairs. But while the Chinese launched a campaign offering trade deals and goodwill to its neighbours to build their soft power, the US inflicted terrible damage to its soft power.
Nathan Gardels, editor of an international affairs journal, New Perspectives Quarterly, wrote in 2005: "Since the Iraq invasion and Abu Ghraib, America is nowadays considered guilty until proven innocent. This is new … America has lost the protection of its soft power … Since World War II this has been the legitimating complement to military might."
Kevin Rudd pointedly noted the contrast between China's shrewd pursuit of global credibility and America's reckless squandering of it. When he met Bush in September 2007, Rudd rather cheekily gave him a copy of The Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming The World, by an American journalist, Joshua Kurlantzick.
Bush's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said he did not understand the concept of soft power. The result was obvious. The gratuitous bellicosity and offensive high-handedness of the Bush team sent world regard for the US to its lowest level since at least the Vietnam War. Rumsfeld's successor, Robert Gates, appointed by Bush and now serving under Obama, is a wiser man. "One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win," he said in a 2007 speech to student officers.
"My message today is not about the defence budget or military power. My message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former director of the CIA and now as Secretary of Defence, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power."
The advent of Barack Obama restored tremendous amounts of US soft power because of the global goodwill that greeted his elevation. Reaction to Jackson's death illustrates anew the reservoir of soft power the US commands.
But, as Gates and Nye note, soft power needs to be paired with hard power. There is good news here, and bad. Obama's foreign policy is, so far, remarkably astute. The bad news is the US economy. Even though recovery is under way, the country is burdened with such immense debt that it is seriously enfeebled. Stringent remedial action is required over the next few years.
Wisely led, the US can lead the world not through fear of its guns or craving for its money but the power of its values and the force of its example. More than any other country, it has the capacity to embody the hopes of the world.
Bush's theme song could have been We Warn The World. A Jackson hit was We Are The World. Even though it was written as a charity number, its title could be the anthem for the new America.
Peter Hartcher is the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.