what is to be done?

That is obviously a trick question, given its ancestry. The answer is, not much. The election of Obama is at one and the same time not a particularly surprising or necessarily dangerous thing while also being a sign of serious degeneracy. To strike an optimistic note, the American Republic has survived, in one form or another, the presidencies of sanguinary and self-absorbed despots before (e.g. Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, W), and I assume that it will survive Mr. Obama and his forthcoming ‘ministry of All the Talents’ (though I would certainly prefer Grenville’s version).

On the other hand, the election of such an obvious charlatan is a manifest signal of the sheepishness of the American public. Free people don’t need leaders; they need rulers (i.e. people who make rulings). Americans these days, however, offer all of the signs of a people who are desperately seeking a duce, and whose newly elected president gives every indication that his will be a cult of celebrity of a very high order indeed. Perhaps, we will soon see the cultural mandarins in Hollywood produce a homegrown Leni Riefenstahl to do our dear leader justice.

Whatever the case may be, however, Mr. Obama doesn’t seem completely sui generis, and my guess is that the 4th American Republic will endure his tenure.

For political skeptics, my suggestion is to keep your head down and cultivate your own garden. As Oakeshott noted:

'The things that political activity can achieve are often valuable, but I do not believe that they are ever the most valuable things in the communal life of a society. A limitation of view, which appears so clear and practical, but which amounts to little more than a mental fog, is inseparable from political activity. A mind fixed and callous to all subtle distinctions, emotional and intellectual habits become bogus from repetition and lack of examination, unreal loyalties, delusive aims, false significances are what political action involves…[Finally], political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the concurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the false simplification of human life implied in even the best of its purposes.'

So, instead of worrying about the identity of the next Secretary of the Interior, go read some Nabokov.