It's amusing when Jews criticize a Jew puppet, albeit in this case he read my mind.

Obama – the man is the message

On Tuesday Barack Obama will finally get the chance to say something memorable. This may seem like a curmudgeonly thing to say about a man who is widely hailed as one of the great orators of his age. But Mr Obama has perfected the art of sounding marvellous while saying very little.

I was in the stadium at the Democratic party convention when Mr Obama made his speech accepting the presidential nomination last August. It was spellbinding, moving, I shed a tear. But, strangely enough, I cannot remember a thing he said. It was the same when Mr Obama spoke in Berlin over the summer. Hundreds of thousands came and cheered. Few can recall a single phrase from the speech.

Obama amnesia is a fairly common condition. A quick poll of colleagues reveals that the only saying of the new president that has incontestably lodged in our collective brain is: “Yes we can.” A few others mentioned: “Change we can believe in.” There was broad agreement that Mr Obama had made an excellent and profound speech on race in America, although nobody could remember the precise details.

On Tuesday, when he makes his inaugural address in Washington, Mr Obama will doubtless once again blow his audience away. He will also have the chance finally to give a speech whose phrases will resonate through history. But, perhaps, he would be wise once again to pass up the opportunity.

For with Barack Obama, the man is the message. Mr Obama inspires not because of anything he says, but because of who he is.

Michael Gerson, President George W. Bush’s speechwriter, says that when he sat down to read the inaugural addresses of all previous presidents, it became very obvious to him that the central theme of American history is race. Simply by mounting the platform as America’s first ever black president, Mr Obama will be sending a message of change and reconciliation.

But it is not just Mr Obama’s race that sends a powerful message. Even if he does not say anything very remarkable, he says it beautifully. His feeling for language and his obvious intelligence are a massive relief after the staggering inarticulacy of Mr Bush. It will be good to have an American president who inspires hope rather than ridicule when he opens his mouth.

During the election campaign, Mr Obama sent another powerful message just by staying calm in a crisis. John McCain, his rival, thrashed around melodramatically in response to the meltdown on Wall Street. Mr Obama kept his cool. More than anything he said about the financial crisis, Mr Obama’s demeanour impressed the electorate. He looked presidential.

The new president himself is well aware that his slightly elusive qualities only add to his political potency. In the prologue to his book, The Audacity of Hope, he writes that: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Mr Obama shows every sign of pulling off this trick in the rest of the world, as well as in the US. Indeed, polls regularly demonstrate that he is even more popular overseas than he is at home. Yet the rest of the world has remarkably little to go on.

People know that Mr Obama looks nice and speaks well, that he is black, that he opposed the Iraq war and that he believes in dialogue. They know, above all, that he is not President Bush.

This last point is crucial. The presidential election revealed a tension between two countries – not just the “red” and “blue” Americas that Mr Obama has promised to reconcile. It also revealed a divide between American exceptionalism and American universalism.

American exceptionalism would hold the US aloof from the rest of the world as a “shining city on a hill”. This is the America without a passport, the America of Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate. A US run by the exceptionalists would turn inwards, tighten border controls, raise tariffs and venerate the military still further.

American universalism is about an America that looks outwards and that thrives through its connections with the rest of the world. This is the US that has pulled the “best and brightest” into Silicon Valley, New York and the world’s finest universities. It is also, increasingly, the America of the future. In a recent poll for Zogby International, more than half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 said that they had friends or family living outside the US – far more than any other age group.

By attracting immigrants from all over the world, the US can claim to be a “universal nation”. With a Kenyan father, a childhood spent partly in Indonesia and a middle name (Hussein) that links him to the Middle East and the Islamic world, Mr Obama seems to epitomise an entirely different sort of America from the mono-cultural Texan swagger of Mr Bush.

Abroad, as well as at home therefore, the new American president is a “blank screen” for people to project their own views and hopes.

On Tuesday, when he gives his inaugural address, Mr Obama will be able to stick to the beautifully delivered generalities that have inspired so many people in the US and around the world.

Once he is in office, all that will change. To govern is to choose. As president, Mr Obama will finally be judged not by who he is or what he says – but by what he does.