President Obama's America

President X’s America is about the hardest-fought election in living memory, the longest and most expensive campaign ever, with the Internet as a crucial battleground for the first time. And what does the winner of this war of attrition get? He can call himself head of state of a tottering superpower, a country embroiled in two unwinnable wars with fewer and fewer allies, with a once all-powerful currency that no one believes in anymore, in the grip of the darkest economic crisis since the 1930s.
President X's America is about melting credit cards, about a middle class drowning in debt, about the coming language war, about unlimited consumption and obesity, about unaffordable gas and hospitals and schools and bagels, about disappearing industry and boarded-up borders.
Can this president restore America's self-confidence, restore moral authority in the world, and breathe new life into that quintessentially American myth: that a better future is always within reach?
Willem Lust is a correspondent for Nova in the United States.