Heartbreaking to even try to compare these leaders

The most intense scrutiny of Obama failed to turn up dirt. Meanwhile, back in SA ...

IN December 2008 a South African arrived in Washington to begin a new professional assignment. One of his first engagements was a lunch meeting with a senior member of the US government.

The presidential election had taken place a month before, so Obamamania was still in the air. Inevitably, the conversation at lunch turned to the Barack Obama phenomenon and the impact of his election on the US body politic.

The American then told the South African a story of Obama's arrival in Washington as a senator in 2006. As with all freshmen senators and congressmen, the security agencies did a sort of risk profile assessment of Obama and his fellow newcomers.

This process is intended to assess the vulnerability of the public representatives - who often sit on Capitol Hill committees which deal with sensitive matters - to blackmail by domestic and foreign actors.

So they establish your relationship with money, your gambling habits, sexual proclivities, tax history and so on. They do not necessarily do anything with the information. It is just for their knowledge.

With most people they will find a misdemeanour here and there and colourful private life here and there.

But on Obama they could find nothing that had not already been revealed in his books. When a second check was done and still nothing was found, a fresh team was put on the case. Even that team came back empty-handed.

When Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency, some of those who had worked on his case watched closely for what his Democratic Party challengers would be able to dig up to use in the mudslinging hurly-burly of US electoral politics.

The primaries went by and he got his party's nomination without a speck of dust on him.

Then came the Republicans, who were going to spare no effort in their quest to discredit the rival of their candidate, John McCain. But even they could find nothing. The best they could dig up was a tenuous link with a radical cleric, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, and an inconsequential hippie resistance movement.

He went on to win the election and the worst that the hateful right wing could do was place question marks over his place of birth.

As the 2012 presidential election race enters the final stretch, the right wing is once more trying to dig up dirt on Obama. The best they have found so far is ... wait for it ... the tenuous link to Wright.

This clean audit did not mean that Obama was an angel and incapable of doing wrong. Anyone who has read his books would have seen his faults. Those who have observed him since he took office will attest to the fact that he is as prone to mistakes and bad judgment as many others.

What it does say is that there was a point in Obama's life that he decided he was going into public life. He would have decided at that point that he would lead his life in as exemplary a manner as possible and keep away from situations and vices that could damage his standing and functioning as a leader.

When the American man told this story, the South African thought of his own country. The previous December the governing party back home had elected as its leader a man who was facing a raft of corruption charges.

A few months after their lunch meeting, his country was likely to elect this man - who had the incredible ability to attract scandals like vermin to a dump site - to be president of the country.

I have not spoken to the South African man in a while, but I am quite sure he is looking at the presidential contests in the two countries and thinking back to his conversation with the US government heavyweight.

I'm sure he is observing how Obama - who has performed reasonably well in his first term - is having to sweat as he defends his record. And all this while South Africa's president nonchalantly bumbles along confidently.

He would be asking himself how it is possible that a man who re-confirmed his corruptibility and immense ineptitude while in office could conceivably still have another shot at the top job.

But then the South African, who is au fait with the bizarre workings of his country's governing party, will be aware that these days, party elections have very little to do with the values and abilities of the candidate.

He will know they have more to do with vote buying. It is about which faction can find the money to ramp up the numbers in order to ensure dominance.

He will be aware that the calibre of people who deliberate on leadership and policy issues in the governing party is a pale shadow of what it once was. Most of these people are just political cattle being herded in this or that direction.

Knowing this, the South African will accept that we are probably doomed to another seven years of corruptible leadership.