Disillusion and disappointment was spreading across the United States today when Barrack Obama used his first White House Press Conference to declare that he had spent his first few hours as President trying to change things, but had found that it just wasn’t possible.

‘I gave it my best shot all morning’ said the 44th President of the United States just hours after his inauguration, ‘but people kept pointing out all these obstacles and problems and apparently it’s all very well talking about change, but actually doing it is like, really, really hard.’

The new President had been elected on a wave of enormous optimism and expectation that some political commentators had predicted might be hard to live up to. But even the most hardened cynics had not expected Obama to give up trying to effect meaningful change quite so quickly. ‘There’s like, all these people you have to persuade to do things differently, and then you have to write special laws, and haggle with Congress, blah, blah, blah – it’s really all much too much hassle. I thought we could maybe just call on market forces to rise to the challenge of the new millennium or something.’

The craven surrender already poses problems working for the Campaign to Re-elect Barrack Obama in four years time, although they are thought to be toying with the slogan ‘Change We Can’t Believe In’. There was further concern when President Obama made an alarming, if familiar slip of the tongue declaring ‘They misunderestimated me’.

George Bush was seen with his successor on the golf course later in the afternoon. Obama explained that Dubya had rung him up to see if he was busy. ‘And I thought, hell, why not? I’ve done all I can do here…’