WASHINGTON - People loathed the recently retired Jesse Helms for precisely the same reasons others loved him. He was a conservative, but when it came to economics a lot of conservatives thought he was a liberal; and a lot of liberals who thought he was a fiery conservative were surprised to find how closely he worked with Democrats. Few thought this lionhearted crusader against United Nations obscurantism, hubris and inefficiency would ever end up lying down with lambs by supporting those who thought the U.S. should pay its UN dues. It was impossible to pin down his true colours. Was he really the isolationist his detractors proclaimed him to be? Not at all: there can be few other senators who urged U.S. engagement in as many areas of the world as Helms did. But then again, Helms was no sycophantic internationalist either. Was Helms' view of foreign policy that of a starry-eyed idealist or a hard-eyed realist? On the one hand, his pleas for the benighted souls labouring in authoritarian countries bespeak a moral-minded man; on the other, his grasp of the verities of U.S. military muscle does not signal a limp-wristed appreciation of the Innate Goodness of Mankind. It's difficult to squeeze Helms into either a realist or idealist pigeonhole.

The best way to get a reading on Helms' apparent contradictions is to dispense with the tedious political-science jargon about "realists" and "isolationists" and "multilateralists". These terms lack any meaning in the real world. There are few individuals who are all of one and nothing of the other, and those who are rarely make good diplomats or politicians. Instead, we should think historically and seek to place Helms within a particular American tradition. In the Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, accurately described Helms as a "Jacksonian", so-called after General Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president (1829-1837). And what might that be? According to Mr. Mead: rooted in colonial Scots-Irish settlers "opposed [to] the wealthy merchants and planters in the opulent plantations of the coastal regions, Jacksonian populism is anti-government, anti-elitist and pro-middle class".

Jacksonianism and its peculiar world-view is one of four great American traditions of foreign policy. The first of these is Jeffersonian (after Thomas Jefferson), the second Hamiltonian (after Alexander Hamilton) and the third, Wilsonian (after Woodrow Wilson). Jefferson, who served as both a secretary of state and, of course, president, was monomaniacal in his commitment to the deepest principles of the American Revolution, in particular its Enlightenment emphasis on Republicanism and Liberty. He detested political parties, seeing in them the seeds of monarchism, and preferred instead to exalt the bluff, honest Americans who were farmers or lived outside the cities in their rural idylls. Separated from the European ancien regimes, America could stand alone as a beacon, he believed, and could therefore dispense with a standing army or navy -- those playthings of kings and emperors. Foremost among those wishing to do the United States down was Britain, whose commercial and military might not only made waves, but ruled them. For these intellectual and strategic reasons, Jefferson would come very close indeed to adulating the French revolutionaries, even at their most bloodsoaked.

Jefferson's perspective on foreign affairs was complex, though it superficially sounds like "isolationism." If anything, it could be characterized as a "policy of non- involvement," which is quite another thing. While he counselled against forming alliances -- that sort of thing smacked of cynical Europeanism -- he never advocated economic self-sufficiency, the true mark of an isolationist. "Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto," he told a friend in 1799. But while he loved Liberty, Jefferson stopped short of arguing that America's task was to bring the light of freedom to the suborned and the vanquished. Writing to James Monroe in 1823, Jefferson directed that "the presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation as well as moral sentiment enlists all our partialities and prayers in favour of one and our equal execrations against the other." Imposing Liberty on others, possibly against their will, would actually contradict the republican spirit, but any international crises which might arise could be dealt with through patient, painstaking diplomacy.

There were wrinkles in Jefferson's thought, however. If another nation indicated it wanted to be free, should America help? Jefferson believed it was natural others would desire to follow the path beaten by the Minutemen and illuminated by the fires of Liberty. Therefore, "countries ... have a right to be free, and we a right to aid them, as a strong man has a right to assist a weak one assailed by the robber or murderer," Jefferson told Monroe. It is quite difficult to give a modern example of a Jeffersonian. On the foreign affairs level, probably the closest is Pat Buchanan, who has railed against the perverted "American Empire" and its far-flung commitments while battening down the protectionist hatches and restoring proper Republican principles at home.

Jefferson's nemesis, notoriously, was Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. Hamilton, Jefferson was convinced, was a malign crypto-Revolutionary sellout, a militarist, an Anglophile and a monarchist-by-stealth who associated with the slick merchants and clever-clever lawyers in New York. To Jefferson, mercantile interests, university-trained professionals and the bewigged, stockinged diplomatic coterie clustered around Hamilton were remindful of the aristocratic elitism he so detested. Hamilton's clear-eyed declarations on the sinful, manipulative, greedy nature of Man only deepened Jefferson's suspicions of his rival. Hamilton upheld a powerful presidency and the strong central government flowing from executive action. In Colonial days, businessmen favoured Big Federal Government -- of the Hamiltonian sort, not that of the post-1945 welfare state -- mainly because it ensured sound public finance, adequate armed forces and, most importantly, enjoyed enough sway to keep the global trading-routes open to American goods.

In terms of foreign policy, Hamilton was indeed an Anglophile, owing to his conviction that the British Constitution -- a paragon of decent pragmatism -- had nurtured British might. Hamilton conceived the United States rather as Britain regarded the Continent: separated by a watery moat from European squabbling and protected by the Royal Navy, London expanded imperially. When national interests -- soon to be a Hamiltonian call to arms -- called for it, however, Britain would intervene to keep the European balance of power in a state of equilibrium. Peace in Europe allowed a quiet life, and the quiet life permitted merchants to make money and enrich the treasury's coffers. For Hamiltonians, therefore, "national" interests were synonymous with the United States' commercial and financial interests. Testifying to Hamiltonian continuity, it is remarkable that American entry into the First and Second World Wars was provoked by attacks on shipping (the torpedoeing of the Lusitania in 1915) and its naval supremacy in the Pacific (the blow devastatingly struck at Pearl Harbour). Until the Great Depression, Hamiltonianism was firmly protectionist. It was only when the British responded to the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff by raising their own tariffs against American goods that Hamiltonians learned the lesson of reciprocity. If Washington wanted easy access to world markets, world markets must have easy access to the American public. Of paramount importance to Hamiltonians then and now was, for obvious reasons, a rock-steady international financial system. Of dramatically lesser importance was introducing or illuminating democratic principles to alien tyrannies and barbarous tribes.

Contemporary Hamiltonians are easy to find. Anyone who backs free trade with China, for instance, is a Hamiltonian to his boots, as are those who feel the Internet heralds the beginning of a Globalized Era. One may find a high Hamiltonian correlation, too, among those who endorse the Special Relationship with Britain, and, on a broader level, seek to create a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement or evolve an "Anglosphere." The latter, foremost among whose theorists is James Bennett, sees a natural historical and cultural connection between the world's English-speaking peoples, spread as they are from Canada to India to Australia.

The most recent "ism" is Wilsonianism, which emerged in the shell-shocked aftermath of the Great War, a war many Americans believed to exemplify the evils of dynastic alliances and secret diplomacy. Resembling Jeffersonianism in its exaltation of such universalist intangibles as Truth, Justice and Self- Determination, Wilsonianism was distinguished by its energetic evangelism. Unlike Jefferson, Wilson sincerely believed the New World had a duty to teach the Old the errors of its ways. In Wilson's view, the United States must make the world "safe for democracy." To Wilsonians, openness and transparency are key, hence its aversion to secret diplomacy. It tends, unlike Hamiltonianism, to draw a Manichaean distinction between Good and Evil, and today's advocates often support a strong military capable of intervening in foreign disputes. Like Hamiltonianism, however, free trade -- because it is believed to spur the creation of a middle-class and foster property-rights, the twin bases of democracy and good government -- is understood as a divine good and a moral end unto itself.

Crusading for "human rights" is a dead giveaway when spotting a latter-day Wilsonian, as is agitating for an International Criminal Court, relinquishing powers to the UN (Wilson vainly attempted to lure the United States into the League of Nations: "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?" he asked a dubious Senate, which did) or calling for more international treaties to solve the world's problems. Within the Wilsonian community, which has traditionally been Democratic, there is a Reaganite neoconservative element that stridently upholds America's exceptionalism. The duty of the United States, neocons say, is to defend the downtrodden with American martial prowess and lift up their spirits by proclaiming the virtues of democracy and freedom to their masters. The recent announcement that the Washington-backed Iraqi National Congress -- the umbrella opposition group to Saddam Hussein -- will begin beaming radio broadcasts into Iraq, along with the possibility of a "war of liberation," are of a piece with neoconservative Wilsonianism.

Which brings us to Jesse Helms and the Jacksonians. A few years ago, in a marvellous essay in the journal, The National Interest, Walter Russell Mead elaborated on this elusive but immensely potent strain of foreign policy thinking. Jacksonians are despised by Jeffersonians, Wilsonians and Hamiltonians as racist regressive hicks, but this is a stupid media stereotype. Jacksonians, in fact, are what George Bush calls "ordinary, hard-working Americans," the sort of Common People who go to church regularly, distrust "Washington power-brokers," pinstriped elitists and centralizing federal bureaucrats (Jackson thought government offices should rotate among deserving applicants), lead honest lives, support their families, prefer simple solutions to complicated problems, dislike federal taxes but will fight to the death to keep their benefits like Social Security and Medicare, read USA Today and Time, watch Martha Stewart, often perform military or reserve service, do volunteer work, keep their debts in check, prefer majority rights over minority privileges, put the kids through college by saving up, complain about welfare spongers living the life of Reilly, dislike "performance art" and too much violence in movies, shop at L.L. Bean and Sears, vacation in friendly places, use AOL as their Internet service provider and buy sensible cars. So long as you adhere to the unwritten "code," anyone -- black, Asian, Muslim, homosexual -- can nowadays be a Jacksonian Middle American.

Democratic since Jackson set the stage for universal manhood suffrage, southern and midwestern Jacksonians went for Nixon and have stayed on the GOP's non-ideological moderate wing since. Though slow to anger, once their blood is up, Jacksonians are fiercely patriotic and are willing to prosecute war to its annihilatory conclusion. Like Hamiltonians, they want strong armed forces and the quiet life; unlike Wilsonians, they see the outside world as being inevitably nasty, brutal and irrational, but if they see a plucky little democracy gamely fending off a bully, honour calls for sending in the troops (Jackson himself once killed a man who slurred his wife). They do stop short, however, of backing humanitarian interventions and appeasing the UN. Domestically, being intellectually (and sometimes genetically) descended from Scots-Irish farmers and frontiersmen, Jacksonians believe, like Jefferson, that the government's role is to protect middle- and working-class Americans. As such, they can waver on the Hamiltonian idea of free trade and "moving jobs to Mexico"; unrestricted and low-skilled immigration also unsettles them. This is not to say Jacksonians are anti-business. Rather, just like Old Hickory, they dislike the "bargain and corruption" (in Jackson's words) that set in among professional politicians and their juiced-up friends. Treasuring their doughty independence, they want to start their own businesses and wish the government would butt out. Jesse Helms was not a genius, nor was he immensely talented, but he did enjoy the gift of naturally connecting to America's vast Jacksonian population. A Jacksonian by inclination and birth, Helms loyally fought their corner for decades.