In characteristic English style, Peter Mandelson smiled wanly and spoke politely as he plunged the knife into recently departed European leaders during an appearance last month at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I make, obviously, no personal comment at all on the records of President Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder in Germany,” said Mr. Mandelson, a former British cabinet minister whose ruthless fealty to Tony Blair was among the attributes that earned him the nickname “The Prince of Darkness.”

“But to say that they had a strong vision of Europe—that is, a strong sense of European destiny and progress – I think would be a slight exaggeration,” he explained. “And I think to describe Mr. Chirac—and in his late years of office, Mr. Schroeder – as strong Atlanticists would also be erring on the side of the generous.”

Mr. Mandelson’s comments elicited some snickers from the audience on Park Avenue. But they were merely an entertaining detour en route to his larger point, which was that transatlantic relations were—at least in his view—improving.

He divined “an important opportunity for us” in the elections of Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Angela Merkel in Germany. “Why? Because both of them are self-confessed Atlanticists,” he said.

Mr. Mandelson needed little encouragement to focus closer to home during a brief interview with the Observer immediately after the event.

He asserted that the arrival of British prime minister Gordon Brown would only solidify the closeness that existed between the UK and the U.S. during Tony Blair’s premiership.

“I don’t think you’ll see a shift, I think you’ll see continuity,” he said. “Gordon Brown views the United States as Britain’s most important bilateral relationship, exactly in the way that Tony Blair did.”

Mr. Mandelson also poured cold water on the suggestion that domestic pressure upon Mr. Brown to create a greater sense of separation between Britain and the U.S. could prove too intense to resist.

“No, I don’t [agree],” he said. “Look, I’m not going to disguise from you that there are many in Britain—mainly but not only on the Left of the political spectrum—who dislike Mr. Bush’s policies, who would like to see Britain distancing itself more from the administration. But if you’re asking me whether that’s going to lead to some major departure or rupture, then I most certainly don’t [think so], no.”

Turning his attention once again toward the current leaders in France and Germany, Mr. Mandelson claimed that their presence had already lent an “improved tone” to transatlantic relations.

The former British cabinet minister is far from alone in perceiving a new dawn to be creeping over the horizon.

“In many ways, the galaxy of international leaders has never been better for the United States,” Erik Goldstein of Boston University’s International Relations Department told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year.

The ascensions of Ms. Merkel and, particularly, Mr. Sarkozy have been heralded by American conservatives, who see their victories as evidence that anti-Americanism is neither as widespread nor as trenchant among Europeans as some have suggested. After all, they argue, didn’t Mr. Sarkozy’s detractors label him ‘Sarko the American’, and did he not win over French voters regardless?

Mr. Sarkozy’s victory, Fred Thompson said in an ABC radio commentary, “has been a serious blow to those who claim that America has earned the undying hatred of Europeans… A French president who openly admires America is an embarrassment to those who view us as the country bumpkin cousins of the sophisticated Europeans.”

The New York Sun put things even more colorfully in an editorial:

“How are all those Democratic Party, pinky-in-the-air U.N. admirers who wailed about Mr. Bush’s alienating of Europe going to explain this turn of events?” it gloated.

It is not quite as simple as that. For a start, it takes a robust sense of self-importance to assume that national elections on the other side of the Atlantic are nothing more than referenda on relations with America.

In fact, the French and German elections were largely decided by domestic issues. In both cases, a moribund economy and a general sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo fuelled the victories of candidates whose pro-free market reform credentials were more important than their pro-Americanism.

A survey released in September by Italy’s Center for the Study of Political Change made even more bracing reading for those who claimed to feel a new warm breeze of amity wafting across the ocean. It found European populations at large much more hostile to the U.S. than were political elites.

Seventy-seven per cent of EU officials and 74 per cent of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) answered ‘yes’ when asked whether it was desirable that the U.S. exert strong leadership in world affairs. But the survey indicated that only 36 per cent of the EU public agreed.

Similarly, while majorities of both EU officials and MEPs expressed confidence that transatlantic relations would improve after the 2008 U.S. presidential election, only 38 per cent of the general public agreed.

Perhaps such statistics overestimate the long-term damage done to America’s international reputation. After all, if the solidarity expressed with the U.S. in the days after September 11 2001 can so quickly turn to hostility, it seems reasonable to assume things could flip in the opposite direction just as speedily.

Mr. Mandelson is among those who believe gloomy conclusions can be too hastily drawn from statistics like those in the Italian survey.

“There is a bond, an interdependence, which people recognize and which goes far deeper than people’s views of any particular administration, policy or action,” he said.

Time may prove that to be true. But rumors of a return to trans-Atlantic harmony are premature for the moment.

At the very least, the cleft between Europeans and Americans seems deeper and more bitter than the cheerleaders of U.S. conservatism – or the elites of European politics—would like to believe.