I suggest that part of the reason so many have been disappointed with Obama is that their expectations were unattainably high, and also because his supporters, especially liberals, projected their hopes on to him with little regard for his innate pragmatism. West admits this but says Obama is partly to blame. “When you mobilise the legacy of Martin [Luther] King and put a bust of Martin King in the Oval Office, people elevate their hopes. Martin King is not just every brother,” he says. “It’s like a novelist being obsessed with Tolstoy or Proust and then he ends up writing short stories that can barely get into some middlebrow magazine. Hey, you got our hopes up man! I was expecting Proust or Tolstoy, instead it would barely get in Newsweek.”