It was a toast that those of us who were there will be telling our children and grandchildren about for years. The occasion was a small lunch at the Postli hotel in Davos Friday for the new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and a group of newspaper men and women attending the World Economic Conference. Even a gathering of cynical scriveners found it was hard to suppress a surge of admiration for the man who led the Orange Revolution that saved, at least for the moment, democracy in the heart of what used to be the Soviet empire.

The president had already received a standing ovation before the full conference, where he delivered an address to talk about Ukraine’s awakening and its desire to become part of Europe. One thing that became clear in the small dining room was the startling evidence – the mottles on his face and the bluish-gray tinge to patches of his skin – of the poisoning to which Mr. Yushchenko had been subjected and which almost killed him, as opponents sought to block his rise. But none of that damage was evident in his voice, as he took his place at one of a handful of tables and announced he wanted to make a few brief remarks.

He started by saying that not only that Ukraine wanted to be part of Europe but that it wanted to be part of European business. His government, he declared, is going to wipe out the scourge of corruption in Ukraine. The problem has been enormous for his economy. Companies, he said, can mark it in their business plans for 2005 – “save expenses via ungiven bribes.” This drew a laugh. The problem, Mr. Yushchenko asserted, “is not something that is unwinnable.”

He then went on to sketch a decidedly supply-side approach to taxes, saying that it is “a disgrace that more than 50% of the economy is in the shadows,” meaning that it is carried on in the black market, out of reach of the tax collectors and regulators. He said that the new government will deal with this through a combination of tax reduction and tax enforcement. This is not only something that President Putin put through in Russia, but also, in broad outlines, what President Reagan put through in America. If Mr. Yushchenko is successful, he will bring in yet another confirmation of how a reduction in rates on the top margin tends to generate an increase in revenues.

Then the president moved into a brief disquisition about the law, saying that in Ukraine today, judges are national heroes. He was referring to the fact that it was the judiciary that ordered a new election after the abuses of the first vote became apparent. The judges had shown physical courage – some being so threatened that they were not sleeping in their own homes. Mr. Yushchenko said that with the accession of his government he declared, “your honors, that’s the last night you spend out of your homes.”

It was when Mr. Yushchenko turned to the question of free speech and the free press that he cited the American constitutional founders. “Without a free press,” he said, “it’s impossible to talk about democracy in any country.” He referred specifically to the early times of American democracy. He cited Jefferson by name but also Jefferson’s famous remark, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.”

As the president spoke, during the remarks leading up to his toast and during questions and answers over lunch, I could not help thinking of President Bush’s second inaugural speech. It is one thing to hear the stirring words in the abstract, another to hear the same sentiments voiced by a politician who has become the very personification of the dream that Mr. Bush sought to ignite around the world. There was much cynicism throughout the Davos conference in respect of Mr. Bush and the American administration. But it was hard to detect it at the lunch with the Ukrainian leader.

Particularly when the president asked his luncheon companions to fill their glasses to join him in a toast. Holding a glass in his left hand, he reached across with his right hand and tapped himself on his left shoulder, saying that he hoped each of his luncheon companions would have an “angel” seated on his shoulder. This brought what was certainly a polite but a less-than-raucous raising of glasses. So the president then gave a little disquisition on the origins of toasting, which, if I understood him correctly, he asserted began in Ukraine.

His stressed the importance of making sure that the glasses were forcefully clinked. It seems, he said, that the traditional method of assassination in Ukraine was – and here he paused for effect – poisoning. The point at which one guarded oneself against this fate was the toast. The idea was to clink classes with enough force that some drops of each drink spilled over into the other. And with this he bade his interlocutors to clink their glasses and make a toast. This is when I turned to my wife, who was sitting next to me, collided my glass with hers, and, not knowing Ukrainian, uttered the wonderful Jewish salute – “l’Chaim,” to life – with a little extra zest.