Forget experience: only cheerfulness can save us

President Hoover, dourfulness personified, was a man highly experienced in economic affairs, who had done a marvellous job in saving Germans from starvation after the Great War. But when push came to crunch in the slump of the 1930s he failed miserably.

On the other hand, his successor, F.D.R., who had no economic experience at all, and at the time was being dismissed by Walter Lippmann, America's most prestigious journalist, as a playboy dilettante, is now credited for having saved the day in spite of - ­ or rather because of - that lack of experience.

For it was this which enabled him to remain so cheerful and optimistic about overcoming the difficulties; a cheerfulness and optimism so contagious that the American people believed him when he said that there was "nothing to fear but fear itself".

So perhaps it is not so much experience but rather that blessed cheerfulness, with the eloquence to express it, which is needed in a leader today. If that is the case, which I believe it is, then step forward Barack Obama, author of the classic The Audacity of Hope, who is the only great orator of our day with a smile as radiant as F.D.R.'s, who might just work the miracle.  

Nobody else I can think of has the necessary magic with words; and it is words, not figures ­ - even trillions of them - which could be the saving grace.  

One has only to listen to Gordon Brown to know that he lacks this gift, as to a lesser degree, does Cameron, whose words, like spun-sugar, carry no weight. Our very own Kenneth Clarke had something of the cheerful optimism which is needed but he is yesterday's man. Barack Obama has to be today's.
Roll on that day. ·