Even a Nobel laureate might end up feeling miserable, especially if he happens to be the president of the United States of America. What good is a peace prize given by a Swedish committee when people at home consider their president’s party unworthy of their vote? Barack Obama, “surprised and humbled” by the Nobel peace prize, justified the honour as “a call to action”. He need not have waited that long. It has been a year since Americans have elected their first black president. In these 12 months, Mr Obama has made too many tall promises and delivered too little on the ground. The national economy, in spite of the revival package, is yet to recover appreciably. Healthcare and tax reforms have put off the middle-class whites (who form the Republican support base), and Afghanistan is going from bad to worse. So Mr Obama should be the last person to be surprised by the Republican resurgence, as the results of the recent state elections across the US show. The Democrats have not only performed dismally, losing important gubernatorial posts in Virginia and New Jersey, but their defeats have also cost their president dearly. Since his inauguration in January this year, Mr Obama’s approval ratings have been going down from an initial whopping 70 per cent. In July, his ratings were worse than what George W. Bush had enjoyed in the same period of his own presidency. By mid-October, the figure had plunged to 50 per cent, making Mr Obama’s popularity slightly below the average for all US presidents since World War II.

Clearly, the aura of romance and heroism that the US media had so expertly cultivated around Mr Obama has finally started to fade. However, the time for a “Republican renaissance” — to quote Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican national committee — may not have arrived just yet. Although the Republicans have secured a number of key states, a clash of interests between the moderates and the hardliners within the party persists. There is no reason for the Republicans to forget just yet that their last president was voted out of power as one of the most unpopular leaders of the nation. Or put behind the fact that most of the crosses that Mr Obama is now burdened with were the fruits of Mr Bush’s eight-year misrule. Equally, Mr Obama should also snap out of the fairy tale that has been spun around him by the liberal press. Romance must give way to real life.