Gordon Brown could have delivered a modern Gettysburg address or read the football results. His address to both houses of Congress, pitched somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, was never going to inspire rapture back in Britain. Billed as yet another "speech of his life", yesterday's oration had some work to do.  Its task, as well as cementing the "special relationship", was supposedly to save the global economy or the scalp of Mr Brown, or both. With more than 40 drafts and an array of contributors, including Tony Blair, the longest SOS note in history was also an appeal for a new American compact with the world by its self-appointed emissary.  Mr Brown's paean to America was heavy on emotion, if light on detail. It portrayed the "economic hurricane" less as a disaster than a catharsis, which would ultimately produce a fairer, safer, greener world, from the dealing floors of Wall Street to the schoolrooms of Rwanda.  The speech lacked the Prime Minister's usual statistical and literary flourishes. He was said to have toyed with injecting some Robert Burns into the text, on the grounds that Barack Obama's hero, Abraham Lincoln, considered Scotland's great liberal poet to be his muse and guide.  Perhaps wisely, the idea was dropped. Many Americans are not au fait with haggis while, back in Britain, Burns scholars might have unfairly exploited any link between the bard and the Prime Minister's pilgrimage to Washington. "Ha! Whare ye gaun, ye crawlin ferlie! Your impudence protests you sairlie," the poet wrote in "To A Louse". Mr Brown's enemies could not have put it more succinctly.  His interest in the bond between Lincoln and Burns was, none the less, reflected in the speech. As two of the most respected world figures, the president and the poet shared a humble upbringing, a sense of destiny and a quest for social equality. The PM's assertion that "our first responsibility is to help the powerless" suggested that he saw this synergy replicated in an Obama/Brown partnership of like-minded pioneers.  Such temerity would appal critics who portrayed his White House visit as a desperate quest for second-hand stardust. The trip has been combed over for slurs or froideurs and the speech condemned, unseen, for its repentance deficit.  There were no flag-draped podiums in the Rose Garden. So what? Are we suddenly nostalgic for the Colgate-sharing, buddy-bonding excesses of the excruciating love-in between Bush and Blair? Do we think that modern leaders should indulge, like Reagan and Thatcher, in the political variant of Mills & Boon? Ooh! No official dinner. What a snub, say critics who normally recoil at world leaders stuffing themselves with lobster thermidor.  While Congress welcomed Mr Brown, he could expect little let-up, as he flew home, from being increasingly pilloried as hopeless, self-interested and inept. There are ample grounds for criticism. One senior minister says that relations between No 10 and some other departments are becoming "utterly dysfunctional".  As the Chancellor told me this week, there is a need for "collective responsibility" and "humility". In refusing to concede past errors, Mr Brown has not only handed the media a stick with which to beat him; he has also limited himself to a partial account of economic collapse and recovery. Politicians cannot "build tomorrow today", as his speech enjoined, unless they first confront their yesterdays. Mr Brown's story has a middle, but no beginning and no end. That does not make it a bad account. The public parody of Mr Brown does no justice to a vision that couples an international consensus on economic recovery to climate change and universal primary education. Whatever his culpability over City freeloading and lax regulation, he has produced as coherent and impassioned an exit strategy from recession as any world leader.  He is right to promote his "new deal" and urge more money for the IMF to rescue crashing economies; right, too, to say that developing countries, such as China, are key to global recovery. He is also well-placed to ensure progress at his G20 meeting. No leader has spent more time on the phone to Premier Wen Jiabao and other international statesmen.  Just as Mr Brown is more effective than he appears, so Mr Obama is more hamstrung. Calling time on American exceptionalism will not be easy. Under pressure at home to bolster protectionism, he must – unlike Mr Brown – put every financial measure before both houses of Congress. Reworking US power relative to other players, such as China and the EU, will demand informed allies. With Angela Merkel facing the grim task of saving Europe from financial implosion, Mr Brown should be in pole position.  President Bush could have done without Mr Blair in the Iraq war, and he told him so. It is doubtful if his successor could dispense so easily with a prime minister brought low, not by lack of will or ability but, in part, by the carping miserabilists within and without his own party.  Critics wonder whether they can bear another 15 months of Brown. They should ask just how well they would fare without him. Voters will, soon enough, have their say on his fate. But if he had been ousted last year, or Mr Cameron had already been parachuted into No 10, it seems unlikely that a "novice" would have navigated disaster so surely.  What do we want, exactly, of our leaders? Boldness, experience and compassion count for nothing, it seems, while an awkward manner is the mark of Cain. Political protectionism means that anti-Brownites moan about his US gallivanting, as if the Prime Minister would be better off personally lagging British lofts. In fact, he has been out and about trying to reassure voters, most recently in Ipswich and Southampton.  But however much Britons must have help and reassurance, the global soapbox matters. You wouldn't think so, with Cabinet ministers locked in navel-gazing succession wars while, in America, a new president causes the world to shift on its axis. On Guantànamo, Iran, Russia and the economy, the US finally has hope to offer.  Meanwhile, a prime minister offered the floor of Congress faces surly deafness at home. Mr Brown has many faults. Miscalculations and a mulish streak mean that the self-styled liberator of tomorrow remains a prisoner of the past. Even so, he has shown himself to be the best – or the least bad – leader for chaotic times. No doubt he could have done many things better, but since no one has come up with any brighter ideas, the rubbishing of Mr Brown should stop. He deserves better, and so do we.  "There is no such thing as an impossible endeavour," he said yesterday. Don't scoff. The hum of homegrown complaint as he spoke in Washington points to a national death wish. Mr Brown should take the rap for all his errors. But if he crashes to oblivion in the flaming wreckage of economic policy, then Britain goes down with him.
The Prime Minister's critics have already written him off. They do so at their    peril, says Mary Riddell.