On all my visits to America this year I have failed to avoid one conversation with virtually all of the locals I have met.
Enjoy it while it lasts: laugh, cry, celebrate Obama##s victory however you please – but remember, he can##t save the world
The minute they discern I##m not American, they launch into what the Manhattan shrinks call an “externalisation” of their sense of embarrassment at being Americans themselves. No amount of tact can usually deter them.
It is a little like those Germans who went around after 1945 expressing their personal shame at the activities of Hitler and his thugs, usually while uttering the mantra: “Und I voss never in ze Ukraine…”
So you can imagine the state of additional ecstasy – above and beyond that caused by St Barack##s election – of Americans at TV pictures of rejoicing people all around the globe when the glad news was confirmed.
One was almost grateful for the cold bath of malice from the sinister President Medvedev of Russia, his strings pulled by the tyrant Putin, arguing improbably that America had caused the war between his country and Georgia and, somewhat more probably, that the US had been the cause of the recent world financial meltdown and the coming recession.
You can always rely on the Russians to rain on any available parade: and perhaps in this instance it was no bad thing.
The President-Elect will be well aware of his challenge. He hasn##t restored America##s good standing in the world – a mere election cannot – but he has provoked an outbreak of goodwill towards his country unseen since 9/11.
He now has to make that permanent by showing that America, in what he calls its “leadership” of the world, can construct a foreign policy that causes other normally supportive nations to be, well, normally supportive, without America rolling over.
George Bush found this impossible. I wouldn##t bank on St Barack finding it much easier.
There are some nasty people on the planet – Mr Medvedev is but one of them – and St Barack will find that the minute he squares up to them (if he squares up to them) a lot of other nasty people will come out of the woodwork to oppose him.
At that stage, a world apparently united in its love of the charismatic new leader, full of “hope”, “change” and “hope for change”, becomes one once more factionalised by the power of America.
From that point onwards the choice is, or should be, simple: you stand up to those who challenge you, but you do it by trying to build a coalition of interest among those who don##t.
Mr Obama has certain advantages in this respect. The Leftists who run other parts of the world – like Gordon Brown – will find him a soulmate. Opportunist, born-again Leftists like the hyperactive President Sarkozy will join the bandwagon too.
It is a great chance, ostensibly, not just for a special relationship between America and Britain, but between America and other European countries where, whatever the colour of their governments, historical factors or a liberal consensus put such a relationship out of the question.
But the pitfalls are many. We know it is the customary ambition of new presidents to solve the problems of the Middle East, but Mr Obama can forget that.
Even if he were able to close down the problems in Iraq, and keep Iran in its box, the export of terrorism to that region from Pakistan (and indeed its export to elsewhere in the world) makes the problem as intractable as ever.
The degree to which America continues to aspire to solve the world##s problems, or chooses to withdraw to an extent from doing so, is a debate waiting to be had. It certainly cannot afford, in the literal sense, to be the world##s policeman.
And if, as threatened, St Barack makes John Kerry Secretary of State, the prospect of Metternich-style (or even Kissinger-style) diplomacy would remain distant.
Mr Kerry couldn##t even beat an already compromised George Bush in 2004: there is no reason to think he##d be any more successful as the incarnation of US foreign policy.
Disbelief has been suspended here to secure the election of St Barack. It has been suspended around much of the globe, too.
The expectations of his changing the world are, frankly, as wild and unrealistic as those of his chances of transforming this battered country simply by his presence in the White House.
It is one thing to run a fabulous campaign, to buy an election victory by massively outspending your rivals, and to have an Oscar-winning style of speaking.
But in the end, reality is what counts: and there may be a little too much of that around for the Obama magic to deal with.
Calm down, dears. He##s only a human being.
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The Daily Telegraph