There is little doubting that US President Barack Obama took a pounding at the polls in the US midterm elections and that this has dealt a significant blow to his prospects of a successful first term. The opposing Republican Party has now taken control of the House of Representatives while the Democrats have a reduced majority in the Senate.

For a president who has made it his mission to extend health insurance to some 40 million people in the US who do not benefit from it – and right wing Republicans dead set on putting spokes in the wheels – this may prove to be quite a blow. If not in a direct manner, then indirectly, with the Republican majority, who now hold the purse strings, refusing to provide the executive with money for the implementation of other policies.

An argument could be made to suggest that Mr Obama is to blame for what happened. After sprinting into the White House in a blaze of glory two years ago, his administration has, to an extent, stalled on the

policy front, with promises that did not materialise and a degree of backtracking.

Perplexingly, he has also stuttered on the personality front, which seemed inconceivable to anyone who watched him campaign. Somehow he has failed to carry that connectivity with him as President, when in theory it should have become easier.

But there is much to say in his defence. Anyone familiar with European politics knows how unpopular a government is after two years in office – which is normally the period when it attempts to push through its most unpalatable policies. The difference, however, is that Europeans are not subjected to a legislative check two years down the line, unlike the American President, which means they have at least another two years of daylight ahead of them.

The US system of checks and balances, which has much to admire, has also worked against him because it is not sufficiently flexible to operate well in times of crisis – and no one can deny that Obama took over at a moment of crisis.

When Franklin Roosevelt became US President in 1932 in the wake of the Wall Street Crash, it was the effective capitulation of Congress – certainly for 100 days – that enabled him to pass through measures that set about repairing a very broken economy. Not only has Mr Obama not had that luxury, but now he has been shackled by a hostile House of Representatives.

Worse than that, it is now a House of Representatives with members from the Tea Party movement – who in most part are so right wing and hillbilly that one would not even want to see them running a residents’ association, never mind having a say in the lower chamber of the world’s superpower.

Yet that is what Obama, who is still by far the US’s best hope (the Republican Party does not even have a leader), must now contend with. And he will stand his best chance of getting through it by resorting to one measure and one measure alone: the power to persuade the people.

If he manages to do that, he will overcome many obstacles. Everyone knows he has the ability to do this. He just needs to rediscover it – for the sake of Americans and the rest of us.