Democratic fantasies face the bracing slap of reality. In just about every speech at their 2008 convention, Democrats promised voters that a change in the White House would, in Barack Obama's formulation, restore "our moral standing" in the world. Replace the unilateralist cowboy at the top with a humbler multilateralist, and the path would finally be cleared to fix vexing international issues such as curbing carbon emissions and dealing with the mullahs in Iran. Like many of the party faithful's long-nurtured beliefs, this hope has disintegrated on contact with reality. "America is losing the free world," said a January headline in the Financial Times . While that statement is exaggerated, the sentiment behind it has been gaining traction around the globe, especially in the wake of the climate conference debacle in Copenhagen. It's not just that the less confrontational American president has been unable to deliver results. He can't even get his phone calls returned. "On the last day of the [Copenhagen] talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India -- but failed each time," Gideon Rachman wrote in the Financial Times piece. "The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport. So Mr Obama must have felt something of a chump when he arrived for a last-minute meeting with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, only to find him already deep in negotiations with the leaders of none other