In Mitt Romney’s failure to become President of the United States, we can see the waning arc of David Cameron’s career – why he failed to bury Gordon Brown at the last election, why he has no hope of winning the next general election and why Boris Johnson will eventually replace him as Tory leader.
Romney always looked far too much like one of the men who got the world economy into this mess to be fully trusted. Just like Cameron.
And Romney always looked like an essentially mediocre rich man’s son whose birthright had fast-tracked him to glory. Just like Cameron.
And Romney was always accused of flip-flopping – which is American for changing his mind on any given subject depending on which way the wind was blowing. Just like Cameron, Romney’s darkest secret is that he believes in nothing – apart from power for its own sake.
But here is where Mitt Romney and David Cameron could be political twins – they both prove that people will never vote for you if they think you secretly despise them.
Hispanic Americans voted for Obama in their millions even though many of them would appear to be closer to Romney and his Republican Party – deeply religious, pro-business, anti-red tape, self-sufficient entrepreneurs. One Colombian storeowner was asked why he had not voted for the Republicans.
“They don’t want us here,” he replied, and it was the most succinct political commentary of the entire election.
Beyond those sickly smiles, the suspicion will always be that Mitt Romney and David Cameron think that if you are stupid enough to be born poor then you deserve all that you get.
A mindset that will never again win an election in the western world.
Are there parallels between the leaders of the Democrats and our own Labour Party?
The greatest similarity is that they are both led by an outsider – Obama the son of a single white mother and an absent Kenyan father, Ed Miliband the son of Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis.
The biggest difference is that while Ed Miliband still looks like the untried new kid in town, Barack Obama is clearly a leader who has worn the heavy crown of leading his nation.
For the last four years this brave, decent and charismatic man has banged his idealistic head against political reality.
It has turned his hair grey.
The next four years are unlikely to be any easier. Most of us would agree that our fragile little planet is undoubtedly a better place with Barack Obama in the White House.
But his acceptance speech, for all its brilliance, had too many American cliches in it for some of us.
“For America, the best is yet to come,” said Obama, that genius of public speaking, whose words still have the power to make my blood tingle with excitement even as I am rolling my eyes, even when I am thinking – how can that be true?
America is no longer the only economic superpower in the world.
There are almost 47 million Americans on food stamps – the best indicator of grinding poverty.
Maybe things will get better for America’s poor if Obama can find some common ground with the Republicans who control the House of Representatives.
But his promise that some brave new world is about to dawn feels meaningless at best.
Listening to Obama talk is like hearing Sinatra sing. The master is at work.
But when Obama says that anyone in America can make it, he resorts to schmaltz instead of emotion, cliche rather than real feeling and empty fantasy rather than cruel fact.
And yet we would not be human if we did not dare to dream, and if we did not have the will to hope.
Barack Obama’s achievements in office will probably never match those soaring, spine-tingling speeches. How could they?
But that did not stop him getting re-elected, and it will not stop him being loved.
Even when all the evidence is against it, we need to believe that things will get better.
More than any politician in my lifetime, President Obama makes you believe that it is a good thing to dream.
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