Returning English journalist finds a "feeling on so many fronts that Obama and his team simply don't understand governance"

The shock about coming to America after an absence of four months is how, in that time, respect for and confidence in President Obama has slumped. It wasn't good in March; now the effect of what one blogger has called his apparent "impotence" has taken hold. It is not clear what Mr Obama actually does. He isn't engaged with the economy; he certainly isn't engaged with foreign policy; he has abandoned hope of a climate change bill this year (and probably for ever); he has seen his health care bill into law, but America awaits news of how it will be implemented; he is under attack for a casual approach to illegal immigration, notably from the Mexican narco-state. He has only just girded himself to go campaigning for his party in the mid-term elections. Last Sunday was the 100-days-to-go mark, and the talk in politics here is of little else. Joe Biden, the vice-president, has been nominated as "campaigner in chief". Why? What is the President doing?

He appears to be reading the newspapers and the blogs and watching television. Last week, a twisted opponent put out a selectively edited video of a black Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, apparently admitting discriminating against a white farmer. Mrs Sherrod had done nothing of the sort – either the discrimination or, therefore, the admission of it – but was immediately sacked, for fear that Fox News was about to broadcast the video. This outrageous act was followed by an even more outrageous apology by the president the next day – outrageous in that Mrs Sherrod was not immediately given back her job. In the White House there were, we are told, great mutual congratulations (to start with) that swift action had stopped this becoming "a story". Well, it's a story now, not least because it exemplifies the incompetence and disconnection of the administration. Mrs Sherrod's husband was a leading civil rights activist and her father was murdered by white racists in 1965, so there is a resonance to this story that is causing discomfort.

The immediate proof of mismanagement adds to the cumulative feeling on so many other fronts that Mr Obama and his team simply don't understand governance. Last month Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, warned America that without more care being taken it could have a Greece-style debt problem. The president seemed to regard this warning as so self-evidently absurd that he quickly asked Congress for another $50 billion for various social projects. Last week, benefits for the long-term unemployed were extended for another six months at a cost of $34 billion. The health care programme is forecast to cost at least $863 billion. The total deficit this year is to be $1.47 trillion. America's debt is likely to be $18.5 trillion by 2020, though it will be so low as that only if growth is maintained at 4 per cent: it is currently 3 per cent, and rocky.