A decade ago, when things were going badly, we could at east take solace in the fact that we understood the problem: Cowboy diplomacy simply didn’t work. George W. Bush had messed up everything. This was obvious. But at least there was hope - naive hope, but still hope - that someone like Barack Obama could fix all of this. All he had to do was show everyone around the world that we Americans really are nice people - to charm them with his cosmopolitan wiles, soaring rhetoric, and Nobel Peace Prize, and they would go about their business and leave us alone. But now we have given up on the notion that even Mr Obama can change things, and this loss of hope may be the most important and surprising legacy that comes out of the Obama years.