As Barack Obama prepared to leave for Europe this week, Americans fretted over why they can’t seem to make jokes about him. One explanation is that he’s just too wonderful – “not buffoonish in any way”, as one tongue-tied comedian put it in a press account. But surely that can be fixed. What is the internet for, after all, if not to humiliate public figures who have done nothing to deserve it? Another explanation is that Mr Obama is lucky to be black at a time when white people are skittish about cracking racial jokes. True enough, but Mr Obama is more than just a black person.

He is also, for example, a stingy person, according to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. How stingy is he? Why, he’s so stingy that, in campaign headquarters, the first time you put your hand under the electric towel dispenser you get a towel. The second time, you get a message to go see David Plouffe, the tight-fisted campaign manager. Or so the joke goes. Are you laughing? No? Not even a tiny bit? Then we are getting closer to the real problem: there are plenty of jokes about Barack Obama; there just aren’t any good jokes about Barack Obama. And that is because of the obstacles that partisanship has raised to political humour.