God save America? A timely prayer. And God helps the rest of us who, in one way or another are or could be influenced by the antics of the leader of that remaining super power. Watching televised snatches of the Republican convention that met last week in New York to nominate the party's candidate for the presidential elections one was sorely tempted to laugh. Crying, though, was more appropriate.
As part of the stage management and rigmarole, the party bigwigs used members of the family of the incumbent president and sole Republican seeking the right to contest for that mighty job, come November. They trotted them out under the spotlight. They were there, it immediately became apparent, not just to demonstrate what a good family man George W. Bush was.
That would have been merely to counteract the sugar ladled out by the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, and his hugely wealthy wife, until recently a Republican. The two teenaged Bush girls, who kicked off, competed magnificently with the inanities uttered in Mr Bush's favour by Governor Arnold Shwarzenegger, the successful brawny film star who swept California off its feet in the state's latest gubernatorial election.
The two giggling offspring, coached with more perfection than Mr Shwarzenegger's bulging muscles used to be oiled for his celluloid exploits, let the rapturous delegates to the convention into some intimacies of the president/candidate's family.
Declaring that they were not at all stretching it, and without being in the least unruffled, they declared that Mr and Mrs Bush called each other, Bushy. Yes, they really do, the happy girls simpered - Bushy!
If that was not a qualification for re-election, what is? Bushies' offspring were clearly demanding. Anybody who saw giggly sexual undertones in the pet name was a throwback to illiberal times, a fundamentalist prude. Bushy George was the man, and no prissy beating about the bush, ladies and gentlemen.
The convention delegates licked up the saccharine and loved it. The international TV cameras did pick up one or two ladies whose noses puckered as if the cat had brought in something awfully smelly, but also showed that it did not prevent them from also joining in the frenzied clapping.
The Bush offspring did not have much time to enjoy their moment of early personal glory. Their mother was swiftly led on to the centre spot while the cheering was still shoving up the rafters of the hall. She proceeded to reveal more of her famous husband's remarkable attributes.
The President went out to talk to wounded American soldiers, Mrs Bush let it be known, cameras whirring away. Reaching out for the depths of admiration she wanted voters to plumb and share with her, she cried that he, being the kind of man George was, then invited the soldiers into the White House.
The Republican campaign publicists, deafened by the fresh cheering of that huge deal which again lifted the convention hall's roof, must have kicked themselves for being so remiss. Imagine, had Mrs Bush said the President went on to invite the soldiers along to the family ranch, not just the White House, how greater would have been the enthusiastic appreciation of his humaneness.
Those who might have dared wonder whether any cynic could ask why the president had sent the soldiers to an unjustified war in the first place, and what about wounded, slaughtered and abused civilians on the other side, might be presumed to have immediately told that pesky bee in their bonnet to zip it.
There may not be much to choose between many of the policy stances of John Kerry and George W. Bush. Still, I hope that Kerry will at least muster a strong count. Even if only defeat can wipe the smirk off the self-styled Bushies' face, and that is not looking highly likely.