Can He?

Herbert Hoover was a hope-filled and inspiring public leader once. He won a landslide, based in part upon his reputation as the man who saved and rebuilt Belgium after the Great War, his status as a political outsider and engineer, and his general emphasis on competence. Jimmy Carter had a similar, if less weighty appeal in 1976, though he was obviously far less helped by the Ku Klux Klan than Hoover was.

Barack Obama is being treated as though he were some sort of superman whose policies were substantially different from most of the American political class. They are not. Mr Obama appears to be a much smarter and more pliable version of the sub-class of American academics who step into politics, a sort of electable combination of Dan Pat Moynihan and Woodrow Wilson. I think that the challenge before him is being vastly underestimated. Within half a year, he could very well find himself up a creek.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the Democrats in Congress--the people who managed to make Congress even more unpopular than it was at the end of the Republican years, in 2006, and whose collection of giant egoes Marcus Aurelius Biden was stroking this week--are already running around like headless chickens. Obama has had to pre-emptively conjure up a veto of a joint resolution aimed at stopping any new bail-out bill this week alone.

This is a minor matter. The main problem is that anyone thinks a new bail-out bill will be affordable. America is drowining in government debt. The Chinese are funding it. They earned dollars from doing so before, which they used to feed their commodity-driven economy. Yet now, with trade upon the oceans moribund, and with the Chinese economy shrinking, and with a global recession, why would they wish to feed American habits? If Obama heeds those who want to simply expand the money supply, and this leads to inflation, why will the Chinese, the South Koreans, and the Japanese, continue to trade in dollars and not just dump their debt? China is on the edge of an unprecedented depression.

At the same time, America's infrastructure is crumbling so they do need to spend. The obvious thing to do is to start cutting government spending elsewhere and reallocating. But they can't. I know the usual evidence proffered--the American government itself admits it lost $55 billion in 2007, which 'disappeared', foreigners are getting lots of aid, the nuclear arsenal isn't affordable, the wars could simply be ended. But this is all wrong. Almost all American 'aid', let alone investment to Afghanistan and Iraq, goes straight back to American companies, many of whom dodge taxes or who do less of a job than they promised. The federal government can't be run efficiently. Cutting wars and bombs now means spending now and raises all sorts of issues--the troops cannot simply be brought home and thrown on the economic pile.

Obama will not be able to get the money for his ambitious plans and for his new new deal unless he reneges on social security, or socialises the outsourced military-industrial complex, or inflates the economy to kingdom come.

It's worse than that. I still hope that some new technology will present itself to deal with the coming energy crunch, but time is running out. The present recession, when it turns into a depression, will cut funding further for new nuclear and coal schemes, and make America more dependent on oil. The American energy grid will continue to rot. New oil sources, possibly unaffordable anyway, will not be pursued with vigour.

There is one area in which Mr Obama could make a difference. I think that American farmers are going to get into trouble with their heavily credit-dependent spending for next year. I think that this means that foreclosures and spiralling food prices, as well as rising prices for the corn syrup that American food manufacturing depends upon, will hit the American economy next year. This may be compounded by a spot of global cooling. A mefo-bill/AAA type scheme whereby the government guarantees farm investment and utilises a buffer stock policy may forestall this outcome, and I think Obama may be smart enough to propose it; but I think Congress may not do it.

America has, at the end of the Bush years, been reduced to the mercy of events. A little global cooling here, a disease outbreak there, and we could be looking at riots and civil disorder. The place isn't as far up the proverbial creek as Europe, and especially places like Greece, Italy or Britain are, but it is following their descent.

So we face a very bad year which almost no one could do anything about. It's an easy thing to say, and I've said it before, but the man elected on the basis of a slogan of hope --"yes, we can"--which is now being used as some sort of desperate corporate marketing, is going to have to say "no you can't" and hear the same in return. A lot. I hope Mr Obama, who is smarter than the average American politician, escapes the fate of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. I wonder if he will, especially with the media class of the world so determined to build him up and so typically vicious in their disappointment.