Obama will face stiff Republican opposition in 2012, and perhaps revolt from within his own party. Polling in October showed that, among Democrats, 47 per cent believed he should be challenged for renomination, while 51 per cent did not. Among all voters, 47 per cent favoured his re-election (down from 53 per cent in 2008), with 51 per cent opposed. These levels are stunning, especially since Obama was not matched against specific opponents (although for Democrats, Hillary Clinton may be the ghost of both Christmas Past and Christmas Future). Head-to-head, post-election polls show Obama losing to Republicans Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but winning against Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. No wonder Obama seems to be in denial.

Today, only Obama himself really knows which alternative he will choose. In a surreal November 3 press conference, Obama admitted he had taken a "shellacking", but that was little more than a statement of the obvious. He also said: "Over the last two years, we've made progress, but clearly too many people haven't felt that progress yet and they told us that clearly yesterday," and "I think we'd be misreading the election if we thought that the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years." Although he made the requisite post-election noises about co-operating with congressional Republicans, the underlying substance of his remarks pointed toward continuing ideological purity. And unmistakably, it showed Obama in continuing stark denial about American political reality.

The Republican and Tea Party election analysis is exactly the opposite: Obama badly misread his 2008 mandate, and his domestic policies ran contrary to the citizenry's real desires. America was and remains a centre-right nation that was simply fed up with Bush and Republican departures from their basic principles. Accordingly, now is the time to retrench, with government spending and Obama's healthcare reform first on the chopping block. Under this conservative view, shared by many Democrats, Obama's only hope is Bill Clinton-style pragmatism.

Critical, however, in Obama's choice of future direction, is the realm of foreign and national security policy. Obama's initial preoccupation has been relentlessly, unambiguously domestic, but this need not be the case from now on. Obama has made significant national-security decisions, but only when he had no alternative, when events forced his hand, as in Afghanistan. He has not acted with relish or conviction, other than his all-too-visible unease with exercising American power, even in support of palpable US interests.

It is a commonplace that national leaders, including presidents, frustrated on domestic issues turn their attention and energy to international relations. Thus, the prospect of domestic legislative gridlock for the next two years may cause even Obama to lift up his eyes from his community organiser past. And indeed, just three days after the election, he left Washington for an extended trip to Asia, as though symbolically fleeing a battlefield defeat. But shifting focus will not come easily for Obama and he will not necessarily see a potential political advantage. In the 2010 election, there was hardly a whisper of debate over foreign and national security policy. Even terrorist package bombs en route from Yemen the weekend before the election barely caused a ripple in the political maelstrom enveloping Obama and his party. If Republicans did not win a foreign-policy mandate, and with minimal electoral attention even to life-and-death questions like terrorism, why would Obama look outward?