EUROPE is not well. But forget about the hundreds of millions of Europeans who stand to suffer from a deepening of the continent's misfortunes, if you can. What about America? Won't anyone think of us for a change? How about the president? Won't anyone think of him for once? What happens to our presidential election if between now and November Europe is visited by the dread Grexodus, or whatever we're calling it, and everything goes to hell? Mitt Romney becomes a real boy, is my guess.

Last November, Nate Silver of the New York Times laid out the following scenario, using his model for forecasting election outcomes:

Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, and economic growth, rather than continuing along sluggishly, comes to a halt (perhaps the debt dominoes have fallen in Europe). Under these assumptions, Obama would only have a 17 percent chance—about one in six—of winning a majority of the popular vote.

This was Mr Silvers' worst case for Mr Obama replica ray bans, and it could yet become reality. Yesterday, Mr Silver noted that Mr Obama does not face the sort of profoundly dismal economic conditions that sunk Jimmy Carter. But things don't need to be thatbad to spell trouble for the president. "Economists differ greatly on whether [a meltdown in Europe] would have relatively mild or more catastrophic effects on the American economy", Mr Silver reports. "But most versions of it would be enough to leave Mr. Obama as a clear underdog for re-election."

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post writes:

I used to say that Germany's Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank's Mario Draghi were going to decide who America's next president was. If they saved the euro zone, it would be Barack Obama. If they let it fail, it would be Mitt Romney. Then Europe stabilized and I stopped saying it.

Looks like it's time to start again.

Mr Klein admits that this is bit too simple and adds that John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, and Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, may conceivably affect the economic outlook. But one imagines Mr Boehner will be disinclined to help the president along in the next set of debt-ceiling negotiations. And Mr Bernanke seems unlikely to open the monetary spigot except under rather dire conditions, in which case Mr Obama's fate would be sealed.

All this leaves many Democrats very nervous. Can nothing be done? William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, isn't ready to sit idly by and watch Europeans run their own affairs to the detriment of the Democratic Party, and thus the welfare of the whole world. "Obama’s fate, then, may well lie in Angela Merkel’s hands", he admits. "That doesn’t mean, though, that there’s nothing he can do about it." Mr Galston suggests that Mr Obama demand a summit with Ms Merkel and throw America's weight around. He admits this would be a "risky step" that could end in "a diplomatic catastrophe". Neverthless, Mr Galston thinks such a catastrophe would be preferable to simply standing by "while the dominant European country allows short-term politics, nationalist myopia, and misplaced moralism to substitute for far-sighted statesmanship that promotes a broader good."

I can't see how this sort of thing is supposed to work. Where's Mr Obama's leverage? America's usual hostile threats of sanction or invasion would not be credible replica ray ban, no matter how ominously Mr Obama manages to glower. The problem would seem to be that Germany is a democracy (smooth move, Eisenhower!) and Ms Merkel is thus accountable to the German people. I know! Allowing a myopic, moralising, nationalist population to determine its own public policy is a completely ridiculous arrangement, but there it is. Even if the CIA has in its possession Ms Merkel's sordid Beate Uhse purchase history , Mr Obama will probably do best not to risk this particular diplomatic catastrophe.

Mr Galston's bad advice suggests to me that Democrats anxious about the prospects of Grexit would be wise to pray:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.