For instance, Mr Obama shows no particular sign of being able to reconcile the need to end the occupation of Iraq with the need to avoid the disaster that a power vacuum in the heart of the Middle East would cause. Thereafter, America will be judged on its actions, not its words. Could Mr Obama, simply by dint of being black and having lived in Muslim Indonesia for six years as a boy, really change America's international image so easily? He would get a hero's welcome, of course-but the next president will get that whoever he or she is, simply for not being George Bush and not having made such a hash of Iraq. Other areas, though, have always looked knottier. Yes, an Obama presidency would close up two of America's deepest wounds: as a black man, especially one who does not run as a black politician, he would draw the sting of race from its politics as a young man, he would step beyond the poisonous legacy of the 1960s division Vietnam wrought between liberals and conservatives. Yet the Democrats of New Hampshire were probably right to ask for a bit more (had Mr Obama won, he would surely have been unstoppable). And in many ways, a divided, grouchy America's hopes do indeed seem to rest with Mr Obama-personable, consensus-seeking and capable of delivering oratory of some brilliance, in defeat as well as victory. He calls himself a “hope-monger” he argues-not without reason-that change cannot come if the country is mired in the old “Bush-Clinton” partisan politics. More than Mrs Clinton's, his appeal rests on an attractive optimism. It is a measure of how far Mr Obama has come that he is the person who has seemed closest (albeit only for a few days) to satisfying this need.
But what sort of change? And who can deliver it? Sure, they are desperate for “change”: with the economy reeling, politics gridlocked, young people dying in Iraq and the Bush administration a global byword for callous incompetence, huge numbers of Americans have long believed their country is on the wrong track.
That is not just because this is the most open election in America since 1928 (the last time that no incumbent president or vice-president was in the race) it is because Americans don't really know what they want. In fact, the only safe lesson to draw is that the battle for the White House is an extraordinarily fluid affair. Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to be see-sawing even more dramatically-with the Bible-wielding Mike Huckabee winning Iowa (cue, a lot of guff about a fresh face and the power of the religious right) then John McCain winning New Hampshire (all hail now to experience and the virtue of independence) and Rudy Giuliani still ahead in the large states that vote on Super Tuesday on February 5th. Now, suddenly, the talk is of the triumph of experience over hope, of the crushing power of the Clinton machine, of the next chapter in the remarkable story of the Comeback Kids. On January 8th Mrs Clinton staged her comeback, winning in New Hampshire by an even tinier margin (some 7,500 votes), to the surprise of pollsters who had been predicting a trouncing for her.
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