US election: good job by Obama but was anyone listening?

What a pity Barack Obama couldn’t govern anywhere near as well as he speaks.

His glowing endorsement of Hillary Clinton yesterday was ­eloquent, soaring, convincing.

When he’s on song, Obama is a great speaker, better than Bill Clinton, infinitely better than Hillary, or anyone on the Republican side. Most of all, his speech, like most of the best speeches by Democrats, sounded as if was being delivered by a Republican.

Indeed the only presidents Obama quoted by name were Republicans, the sainted Ronald Reagan and the legendary Teddy Roosevelt.

Obama was attempting to do three quite distinct and nominally contradictory things.

One, he wanted to enthuse the Democrat base, to bring the left-wing supporters of Bernie Sanders strongly into Hillary’s column. “Don’t boo, vote,” he told the crowd when they responded to the mention of Donald Trump. He argued more passionately for Hillary than she could ever argue for herself, more convincingly perhaps even than Bill, who the previous day also gave a finely crafted speech trying to humanise his wife.

But Obama’s second big job was even more interesting. Even as he was trying to fire up the liberal Democrat base, Obama was reaching out to Republicans. “Ronald Reagan called America a shining city on a hill,” he told the slightly startled Democrat partisans in the conference, for many of whom Reagan is a figure of evil only slightly less sulphureous than George W. Bush. “Donald Trump calls it a divided crime scene”.

To connect with Republicans who have their doubts about Trump, Obama reached back into his heritage, his Kansas heritage, that is. Who knew the majority of his ancestors voted Republican? Apparently they ­supported “the party of Lincoln”, references to which flowed freely throughout the convention.

The Democrats are making a calculated pitch for independent voters and Republicans who are frightened by Trump. Obama channelled Republican optimism. And there was this classic and traditional declaration of American faith: “We don’t fear the ­future, we shape it”. That’s the American creed, or a central part of it anyway.

Obama’s third big task was ­attacking Trump. “What we heard in Cleveland,” he said, “was not particularly ­Republican and it certainly wasn’t conservative. The Donald is not really a plans guy. He’s not really a facts guy either.”

The attacks on Trump were sustained, but they were generally more civilised than the Republican chant against Clinton at their conference: “Lock her up”.

The hardest thing Obama said about Trump was this: “Anyone who threatens our values — whether fascism, communism, jihadism or a home grown demagogue — will fail”.

Obama is not quite equating Trump with communism, fascism and jihadism, but still, it’s pretty strong stuff.

He enjoys good approval ratings at the moment. Americans like him personally, even if they don’t like the direction their country is moving in. Obama is also benefiting from the early onset of that most powerful emotion — nostalgia.

But whether any Americans are still listening to politicians, even to the President, is moot.