BARRING hardened cynics and the like, not many people could have doubted that Barack Obama’s inauguration as president of the United States was, for a variety of reasons, an extraordinary occasion. And in the nearly three months since, whatever one’s opinion of his efforts on the domestic and international fronts, he cannot credibly be accused of doing nothing.

His visit to Europe earlier this month, which incorporated the G20 summit in London, underlined in a number of ways the differences between him and his predecessor. It could be argued that these, to some extent, are a matter of style: that as an articulate and eloquent speaker who succeeds in conveying the impression of inclusiveness, Obama inevitably comes across as someone less arrogant and out of touch than George W. Bush, and that these superficial differences help to disguise the broad continuity of American policies.

It is important not to lose sight of this argument and the broad truth it conveys, yet it would be facile to maintain that the differences are completely irrelevant. It is extremely unlikely, for instance, that Bush would under any circumstances have used a European trip to spell out his vision for a world free of nuclear weapons, the way Obama did in Prague. That obviously isn’t something that could be achieved within the next four or eight years, yet it is the only context within which anti-proliferation efforts can be made to appear less discriminatory. Bill Clinton signed a comprehensive test-ban treaty in 1996, but could no persuade a Republican-dominated Congress to ratify it, and Bush showed no interest in pursuing the matter. If Obama can redress that shortcoming, it would be a small but important step in the right direction.

The president’s overtures to the Muslim world, meanwhile, resonate not because such an approach hasn’t previously been attempted, but because their sincerity is less questionable. At the risk of reinforcing the view – still held by 10 percent of Americans, according to a recent poll – that he is a covert Muslim, Obama told Turkey’s parliament: "The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them." Hardened Islamist militants are unlikely to be swayed  – if anything, they are likely to share the opinion of those on the far-right fringes of the American political spectrum who perceive the president as a silver-tongued satan – but words such as these are likely to make the broader Muslim world less receptive to notions of the US as an irredeemable mortal foe.

The new administration’s approach towards Afpak – a designation possibly based on the selling point of "invade one nation and obtain the second one at half price" – leaves much to be desired, but at least it follows from a process of consultation, the idea that neighbours must be part of any long-term solution has broadly been accepted, and there has been talk of an exit strategy. America’s Nato partners have been reluctant to beef up their forces in Afghanistan, and the significance of this could not have been lost on Obama. Meanwhile, his admission that "America, like every other nation, has made mistakes and has its flaws" hints at the possibility of course correction, something that is seldom publicly conceded by  US presidents.

A course correction is considerably less likely, however, on the front that constitutes Obama’s biggest challenge: at the G20 as well as domestically, his efforts have been geared towards rescuing capitalism from its own excesses. This is not in the least bit surprising, although it does provide cause for consternation. During his presidential campaign, Obama occasionally expressed concern about disparities of wealth and, notwithstanding the proclivities of Joe the Plumber, suggested that he would be inclined to redress this imbalance. But looking at alternatives to capitalism has never been part of his agenda.

By the time he was elected last November, the US had already been plunged into its deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet he picked well-known votaries of neoliberalism as his economic tsars, instead of candidates less wedded to the idea that there is effectively no alternative to the free market, and barely any limit to the taxpayer funds that can be expended in rescuing it from the deathbed – candidates such as Nobel prize-winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, for instance. The selective bailouts of financial firms and the auto industry are tantamount, as has been pointed out, to the socialization of losses, whereas no antidote to the privatization of profits has even been contemplated.

What this effectively means is that grievous economic misjudgements are rewarded, and the insurance giant AIG’s attempt to pay out enormous bonuses to its executives, after being bailed out by public funds, was such an obvious insult to common sense that the president felt obliged to thwart it. His role in the dismissal of the head of General Motors, meanwhile, prompted a panegyric from the hard-to-please polemicist Michael Moore: "Did Obama really fire the chairman of … the wealthiest and most powerful corporation of the 20th century? Can he do that? Really? Well, damn! What else can he do?!"

Moore concludes that president has sent the message that "the government of, by, and for the people is in charge here, not big business". If only that were even partly true. If anything, government efforts are geared towards saving big business instead of predicating feasible alternatives. This is despite the fact that, amid the monumental economic crisis – a crisis indubitably propelled by the profiteering tendencies of capital – public opinion in the US is in a state of flux. A recent Rasmussen poll revealed that only 53 percent of Americans unequivocally favour the capitalist system. About 20 percent believe there is a case to be made for socialism, whereas the rest are undecided.

This is a remarkable statistic, given that the concept of socialism is, unfortunately, still associated in the popular imagination with the command economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Although doubts have been raised, with some justification, about what precisely is understood by capitalism: in an earlier survey, for instance, 70 percent of respondents expressed their preference for a free-market economy, although it can hardly be denied that even 30 percent support for an unclear alternative adds up to a substantial degree of dissent.

The right-wing extremists – many of them sponsored by Fox News – who appear to believe that Obama is determined to pave the way for socialism or even communism are gravely delusional. In fact, the possibility of systemic change on the economic front is arguably Obama’s profoundest blind spot. It’s close to a century since his compatriots were more inclined towards accepting alternatives to the idea that what’s best for General Motors is best for America. It would almost be a crime not to capitalize on this aspect of change we can believe in.

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