Americans regards him as something of a Messiah. But Obama's second 100 days are likely to be tougher than his first. So will fate overwhelm him?

By Max Hastings for the Daily Mail
Updated: 19:37 EDT, 27 April 2009

There is an old story of a school scripture teacher who asked a sixth-former how he would react if he answered the doorbell one night and found Jesus Christ on the step. The boy said: 'Ask him in, give him a drink and send for the vicar.'

Forget for a moment the Right-wing bitching about Barack Obama. Set aside criticism of his banquet of promises. The overwhelming reality of his first quarter as the most powerful man on Earth is that many Americans regard him as something close to the Messiah.

His poll approval ratings are no higher than were George Bush's eight years ago because a lemon-sour minority of hicks, bigots and Republican retros turns its back on him.

Challenge ahead: American President Barack Obama

But two in three Americans back their new President way beyond mere enthusiasm. They focus on him passionate hopes for a revival of their country's stature and selfbelief, brought low by George Bush and Wall Street's bankers.

Barack, Michelle, their gals and the new first dog dominate America's media like no First Family since the Kennedys. His grace, wit and dignity, together with his wife's feisty, sexy style, fulfil all the nation's yearnings for democratic royalty.

'Americans love this guy,' one of the most powerful - and instinctively cynical - New York editors said to me last week. 'If not him, then what?' A TV pundit asserted at primetime on Thursday that Obama is not merely the most trusted human being in America today, but 'the most trusted institution'.

At the weekend I heard a Texan doctor suggest that Bush was a 'dry drunk'. That is to say, while the former President never touched liquor in the White House, his sly, narrowly obsessional conduct of office was typical of the alcoholic he once was.

Whether or not this is true, one of the most striking characteristics of his successor is that Obama is so comfortable with himself. He seems secure in an emotional compact with his family and the world, which few people and incredibly few politicians achieve.

His serenity astonishes everybody who works with him. He has assumed the mantle of office as if the White House was his natural inheritance.

Tomorrow's 100-day 'landmark', about which everybody has become so excited, is of course unreal. Back in February 1945, when Winston Churchill heard that President Roosevelt would spare only five days to attend the Yalta conference with Stalin, the old Prime Minister observed in exasperation that even the Almighty allowed himself seven days to make the world.

Nowadays, however, summits like the G20 are shoe-horned into a single day. People allow themselves to talk as if a President could change not only anything but everything in three months.

For heaven's sake - the poor man has barely had time to find out where the spare loo rolls are kept in the Oval Office washroom. What we can sensibly say so far is that he has charisma that makes every Hollywood star look a punk. He has set an agenda for change, such as few national leaders attempt. He makes Gordon Brown seem a scowling pygmy.

His staff at the White House speak of the 'head-spinning' pace since Inauguration Day. They battle against chronic exhaustion. Since January 20, the President has ordered the Guantanamo Bay detention centre to be closed, recast Afghanistan strategy, visited nine countries, met 60 national leaders, legislated against job discrimination, extended health coverage, modified the ban on stem-cell research, sacked the boss of General Motors, launched a historic 'reach- out' to the Muslim world, produced a $3.6 trillion (£2.5 trillion) budget, forced a $787 trillion (£538 trillion) economic stimulus through Congress, and flagged his determination to drive ahead with the most radical healthcare proposals in U.S. history.

He wants everything he does to seem part of a single narrative, a bid to make this not just a good presidency, but a great one. Yet it is much too soon to know whether he will succeed, first in solving the economic crisis.

Almost no one I meet here shares the stock market's eagerness to believe the worst is over. 'Everybody is still very scared,' a veteran Wall Street banker told me. 'No big money is risking anything - what we're seeing in the market is a traders' rally.'

Critics accuse the President of failing to use his brilliance as a communicator to explain the crisis to bewildered Americans. It is also alleged that the administration has not yet solved the vital problem of ridding banks of their toxic assets.

I heard an economist suggest a gloomy explanation: 'What if Obama doesn't know what to say?

What if his Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, really can't think what to do next?' The world yearns to see those famous green shoots. Yet smart people on this side of the Atlantic scarcely see a break in the soil.

Obama's presidency is already being compared to Ronald Reagan's, in that the man is much more popular than his policies. The U.S. is instinctively conservative. It is striking to contrast the reaction of its people to the economic crisis with that of the British.

We look to our politicians, however inadequate, to solve problems. Most Americans, however, believe that citizens get things done. They fear and mistrust the state, which is why many are furious about tax money bailing out banks. Polls show 55 per cent popular support for Obama's healthcare plans. But a stubborn rump of Americans recoil from the notion of a national health service.

'What happens when they start rationing transplants when you need one?' demanded a sceptical Florida pensioner.

Family man: Obama with wife Michelle and their two daughters Sasha (L) and Malia at his election rally in Chicago last November

A slow, sore Georgian voter said to a senator on live TV last week: 'I want to be told you are doing absolutely everything in your power to stop this radical, socialist government we've got in the White House spending all our money.'

A Michigan blogger named Tal Simmons wrote: 'Obama's radical ideas, flip-flopping direction and socialist bad-mouthing of our great nation will undo him in 2012.' Another like-minded contributor added: 'He doesn't have the Reagan vision for America, he doesn't have the experience and HE DOESN'T LIKE AMERICA.'

To be sure, he does not like redneck Bush 'ole boy' America. One of the nastiest problems to hit Obama's desk is the torture story. There now seems overwhelming evidence that George Bush and his mad, bad associates led by Vice-President Dick Cheney instigated a policy of systematically mistreating Al Qaeda suspects. They breached U.S. law and have since lied through their teeth about it.

The media pack and Democrats on Capitol Hill are in full cry, demanding justice, vengeance or whatever you want to call it upon those responsible. Obama's body language makes it plain that he does not want to go there.

He dreads the prospect of the country succumbing to an orgy of recrimination and legal process such as was unleashed by Nixon's Watergate and Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal. Americans today need to focus on the present and future. It will be a tragedy if the nation overdoses on punishment for the past.

Yet there is passionate public anger about the 'stain of evil' with which the last administration besmirched the nation's flag and honour. Demands for legal process against the guilty are probably irresistible.

Prepare to see America launch itself into one of its paroxysms of moral indignation, which Barack Obama knows could damage his own presidency.

If Democrats insist on putting Bushies in the dock, cornered Republicans will fight back with everything they have got. Many Americans out there in the sticks still buy Cheney's defiant assertion that 'torture works', that any means were justifiable to save America from harm.

If, God help us, there is a terror attack on the U.S. while alleged Republican torturers are being whipped around a Washington circus ring, Obama's enemies will say that he is 'soft on terrorists'. His popularity could take a disastrous hit.

Yet the influential New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote on Sunday: 'President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won't vanish into a memory hole.

'The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way... What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation's commitment to the rule of law.'

The worst victim of such action could be Obama's campaign for consensus. Each day, his team drives home the message that he is 'the people's President', the 'listening chief executive'. All the world knows, because the White House tells it so, that Obama each day reads ten letters from ordinary voters, picked out by staff from a mailbag of 40,000.

Because I signed up to his website when reporting his campaign last year, I receive the same weekly email messages as 13 million U.S. voters, each one personalised: 'Dear Max, Come to our listening tour meeting at your local town hall. You'll get the chance to help write plans for Organizing America in 2009 and beyond.

These meetings are not just for folks who were involved in the campaign, we're hopeful that every Missourian' - or Kansan, or Ohioan, or Californian - 'will get involved.'

And last week: 'Max - your representatives need to hear from you as they work for the change you mandated in November. Doing what's right can be thankless when the culture of Washington tries to make political games out of the issues that matter to everyday Americans.'

Celebration: Supporters react to Obama's election victory in Chicago

It is all brilliantly done, featuring national video links to the President, a sustained drive to keep every possible American inside Obama's big tent as he presents ever-more contentious legislation to Congress.

Yet already it is plain that bipartisanship cannot hold. Many Republicans hate Obama, just as their grandfathers hated Roosevelt. They want him to fail. For now, they thrash in impotence. But if some flagship administration policies come unstuck, they could gain ground. Obama's big green 'cap and trade' measure on carbon emissions (a system which penalises heavy polluters) is tipped to fall in Congress.

Abroad, with notable myopia, the French and German governments have rebuffed Obama's requests for more help in Afghanistan. Chances are that the U.S. will indeed fail to achieve its Afghan objectives. But that does not alter the fact that Europeans so far seem painfully unimaginative in their response to this remarkable President.

Likewise, Obama's attempts to achieve reconciliation with Iran will probably be frustrated by Iranian fanaticism. He will get no help from Putin's Russia. The U.S. relationship with China promises to stay spiky.

Americans are starting to realise that the world will not lie on its back to have its tummy tickled merely because a superman has moved into the White House.

Obama's second 100 days are likely to be even tougher than his first. Yet because he is such a fascinating man, it is almost as thrilling an experience for a visitor as for an American to watch his story unfold.

Notice that nobody any longer talks about 'this amazing black President'. Even enemies simply acknowledge him as one of the most remarkable personalities of any colour to occupy his office.

John F. Kennedy said on his Inauguration Day in 1961: 'All this will not be finished in the first 100 days, nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days.'

Obama is likely to say something similar in his televised progress report to the American people tomorrow night. Washington is bathed in brilliant spring sunshine. The blossom is out. In many parts of America, supporters are holding 100-day parties. A host of people want to share in the thrill of the Obama experience.

The other night, I asked a veteran Democratic presidential adviser whether this President has the potential to achieve greatness. My friend answered: 'He can't determine that himself. Only fate can make a great President.'

So large are the challenges that Obama faces that we must acknowledge the danger that fate will overwhelm him. He is almost certainly trying to do too much.

But people are awed by the spectacle of a politician who tells the truth, a national leader bent upon achieving in office exactly what he promised on the campaign trail. If he knocks on your door, it is probably smart to ask him in, offer him a drink and send for the vicar.

The new tenant of the White House may not quite be the Messiah, but he is the sort of American leader the world has been waiting a long, long time for.