The streets of Washington are ablaze with Barack Obama. He is in the hot seat for over 100 days, yet anybody strolling down DC's avenues last week might be under the impression he had just arrived. Shop windows, street stalls, hardware and tourist stores, all project his image.

If exposure was the sole arbiter of status, this guy would be a rock star with a religious following, Bono meets the Pope, minus the former's shades and the latter's headgear.

No politician in the free world measures up to this son of the Offaly soil. Comparisons are unfair, if not ludicrous. But it is interesting to note the effect he is having on sentiment in the US. His power to move – so far – is more attributable to how he makes people feel, rather than anything he has achieved.

His policies on the economy are not universally welcomed. On the right, the powerful Fox News and its kindred spirits attack him relentlessly. From left field, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman berates him for the timidity of his stimulus plan.

He doesn't have all the answers, but a growing number of citizens believe his endeavours are honest and rooted in a compulsion to serve everybody, rather than massage vested interests.

Last December, 9% of Americans believed the country was heading in the right direction. Today, over half of them concur. Can he fix it? Maybe he can, but at least he has already brought change to the crucial issue of sentiment.

Optimism is in short supply this side of the Atlantic. Sentiment is keeping company with the economy down in the doldrums. Some of this can be attributable to a cultural and historic tendency towards fatalism. Where the Yanks always see the glass as three quarters full, our instinct is to see nothing but the dregs at the bottom of the vessel. In some quarters, blame for depressed sentiment is being pinned to the door of that amorphous and demented beast, the media. Too much negativity, too little willingness to don the green jersey.

On Wednesday, recruitment consultant David Bloch damned the accursed media in The Irish Times, penning a mish-mash of statistics that were supposed to show that the recession is a figment of our collective imaginations. The headline said, 'Bad-news brigade in media doing Ireland down'. It reminded me of nothing as much as Bertie Ahern's comment in 2006 that doomsayers of the Irish economy should commit suicide.

On Thursday's Prime Time, Noel 'electronic-voting-machine' Dempsey attributed most of Brian Cowen's woes to the negativity emanating from the media and the Opposition. Dempsey, to his credit, managed to retain a serious countenance when delivering that nugget of wisdom.

The notion that the media should tell it like we want it to be, rather than like it is, has resonance with the mushroom theory of keeping them in the dark and feeding them manure. It may suit some interests, but certainly not those of the vast majority of the populace.

Last week, there were a few pointers to the real reasons for negative sentiment in this country. On Wednesday, Maurice Ahern was selected to contest the Dublin Central by-election for Fianna Fáil. Ahern is in his 70s and has never held national office. It wouldn't be unfair to the man to suggest that the only reason he has been selected to run is because he is a brother of Bertie Ahern.

In the US, Bertie would now be regarded as a liability in any electoral contest, much as George Bush was to John McCain's candidacy for president. Over the past decade, Ahern was the guiding light in a government that ransacked the exchequer for electoral gain. Yet he is now regarded as the principle asset to Maurice's candidacy and he also has designs on being Dublin's first elected mayor. This is what still passes for politics here.

Another stalwart of Irish politics, Tom Parlon, was on the radio last week. These days, Tom is the director general of the Construction Industry Federation, for which he is paid handsomely. His back pocket also accommodates a nice little pension from his days as minister for the Office of Public Works.

On Thursday, he told Pat Kenny that when he was throwing money around the place, overseeing the decentralisation debacle, the times were different. "As an elected TD, I did feel that my role was to get the maximum government spend into my constituency through the OPW," he said. This was Parlon's interpretation of his function as an office holder in government. When a minister's focus is on delivering to ensure his re-election, rather than properly managing the country's resources, is it any wonder that we're in the state we're in?

Parlon now relentlessly lobbies the government to rein in public spending in every area except construction, which he wants given special treatment, because he is paid to look after their interests. There ought to be a law against him coming round.

In the US, there is a law against him coming round. Strict rules apply to ex-politicians peddling their influence.

And under Obama, Americans genuinely believe that the public interest is making serious progress against the predominance of special interests.

Change has come to the US. There is little sign of change here in how we're governed. The state has been shipwrecked. Self-interest and special interests still dominate over the public interest.

Until real change is effected in that area, sentiment will continue to wallow in the doldrums.

mclifford@tribune.ie