Is Barack Obama in danger of becoming Tom Dewey?

Along with Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee--and my longstanding infatuation with Mad Jose Biden--Barack Obama was one of my picks for the year's best candidates a long time ago. He seemed genuinely refreshing, and prepared to challenge his party. In addition, the sheer fact of the colour of his skin could transform American verities and allegiances, for the better, and reinforce the better angels of America's nature.

I think that he has, since clinching the nomination, let his natural caution, which is a good thing, get the better of him. His speeches are actually very reminiscent now of Tom Dewey's. Dewey was the pabulum candidate of the Republicans whom everybody assumed would win in 1948, even to the extent of the reporters and pollsters shutting up shop before Truman won his 'shock' victory.

History has been a little unfair to Dewey, but with some reason. He questioned American involvement in Europe in 1944, after all; but he was also a crime busting, crusading and exciting figure within New York for a long time. He promoted and passed the first law against racial discrimination in employment in America, for instance, and reduced New York debt by a colossal $100 million and did it all whilst doubling education spending and cutting taxes. I'm sure that any Governor or President would yearn for such a record in his fantasies.

In 1948, Dewey, who was known as a good speaker, got caught in the flash lamps of a national campaign and simply talked rubbish when he talked at all. Here's a set of extracts from his speeches, and 'political conversations' (which one would expect to be leaked), and they are real quotes for which I'm indebted to David McCullough's magnificent Truman;

"our streams abound with fish...Everybody that rides in a car uses gasoline and oil...ours is a magnificent land, every part of it...it is my destiny to be President, it is written in the stars"

Tell me, if you read Obama's Berlin speech, or one of his recent efforts, don't you get the same dull palsy in your hamstrings? I do like the personal introductory stuff about Square deal America, but it gets bland very quickly.

Senator Obama needs to come back from his break and, to coin a phrase, change. I think that he needs some serious foreign policy heft too, which is of course another reason why I am so keen on Mad Jose Biden, the Yosemite Sam of Tiny Delaware. The world is falling into the descent pattern crazy people like me have been predicting for years and someone who can reassure the praetorians and the people needs to be near the keys of the arsenal.

Biden's a Catholic with a compelling story, he can't be scripted, and he can be as populist as the best of them. He also has a sense of humour. All of this will appeal to swing votes Obama hasn't yet got, and which on his own he has demonstrated a capacity to lose.

The most important thing, however, is that Obama drops the meaningless stuff and starts preparing people for the horrible challenges that lie ahead. The media certainly won't. There is a very good chance whoever is elected could be a one-term President. One can go into the election knowing that and being nobly prepared and at least do a little unthanked good, or you can wait for the fumes from the floorboards to make you sick before you get beaten senseless. I would obviously prefer the next President to take the former route.

This is important. John McCain tends to bear the impression of the last person who spoke to him. His organisational style is one involving the deliberate creation of administrative chaos accompanied by glib belligerence, which was a mess when Clinton did it and which would be worse now.

He isn't solid on foreign policy, and isn't the Maverick he likes to show himself as, which is how he got involved in this boy's club mess, in which many elderly investors who are now dead lost their savings.

Frankly, he does not look like a well man and I can't see any potential republican Vice-President whom one would trust with what is effectively the leadership of a west on the cusp of strategic and economic disaster.

I am well aware perception may be sometimes projection, and that there is something rorschach-like about Obama; but the truth is that the west is now a sort of sixth century Rome and whoever is Emperor in Constantinople can change everything. The danger for the American republic and the world of continuing on the present course is very, very great, and I'd like a new man in Byzantium, and I'd like that man to be Obama.