I am a great fan of Obama but I had decided that his moment of election and the overflowing joy that that projected on America must be his crowning glory and that everything after that was going to be downhill.

That may well turn out to be true but his first action after election , his victory speech was a work of genius.

I am delighted to see these thoughts seconded by the brilliant linguist, academic and author David Crystal in his blog here.

Crystal analyses the speech line by line in an entirely academic way and reckons that it will prove to be;
“one of the great political speeches of our time”.

It would be wonderful to hope that, with all his other obvious attributes, Obama would turn out to be an international statesman of brilliance.

That would be a tremendous gift to the world.