Obama fatigue already??

Europe is now beginning to note that the boy messiah is a "bore".

His speeches have long under-delivered, usually leaving a faintly empty sensation in this listener even though I welcomed, moderately, his victory last year as offering the possibility of a fresh start and a boost to confidence.

Yet, we are told that he is a great orator and in one way he certainly is. He does have a preternatural calm in the spotlight and a mastery of the cadences we associate with the notable speakers in US history - such as JFK and MLK. But beyond that, am I alone in finding him increasingly to be something of a bore?

His performance at the first press conference in London with Gordon Brown featured moments in which he sparkled - his riff on loving the Queen was a high-point. But most of the serious answers that I listened to were interminable, windy and not very impressive. At points there were pauses so long that it appeared he had simply lost his train of thought.

The oversea press also has quickly picked up on the narcissism that our media have not yet noticed.

But Obama was only warming up. "When I was born," (Everything usually leads back to him, you'll notice)... "the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become an American President." (Him again)...

"Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams". (Not by Ronald Reagan they wouldn't have been, when most of Obama's Democrat friends thought the then US President's robust approach to the Cold War made him a loony on the loose).

"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We are here today because of the courage of those who stood up - and took risks - to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like... (subtly this time, but right at the end the sentence leads back to him again).

So why haven't the American media picked up on this?? Never mind, we know the answer.