At first glance, Zakaria's observations now appear rather dated. After eight years of George W Bush, the common wisdom is that capitalism has been excessively deregulated while it's democracy that has been muzzled and now needs to be freed from the shackles of the neo-conservative state. Writing, for example, in this week's New Statesman, Will Hutton suggests that there the consequence of the regulate capitalism will be an the increase in democracy. Thus, he says, Obama's support of public service broadcasting, trade union rights, higher taxes on the rich and multilateralist foreign policy will all create a more harmonious society and, thus, he assumes, a more vibrant democracy.

But I wonder if the causal relationship between regulating capitalism and enriching democracy really is as simple as Hutton suggests. I suspect that Barack Obama's most significant legacy will be his impact on American democracy and not on capitalism. It will be his experiments in direct democracy and his ability to manipulate the American people through the democratization of media rather than his relatively unimaginative economic policies which will make him profoundly different from previous American Presidents. On the eve of an Obama Presidency which promises an authentic style of leadership rarely seen in American history, the questions about deregulated democracy raised in Zakaria's The Future of Freedom are now perhaps more relevant than they've ever been.

Originally published in Andrew Keen's blog The Great Seduction. Read Andrew Keen every Monday in the media section of the paper - independent.co.uk/media