I'm not convinced you can prior to today, but in the future...
Sure you can. At one point, the USGP was the best-paying event on the F1 schedule, as Riain pointed out. The work of Phil Hill, Mario Andretti, Mark Donohue, Dan Gurney and others made it very clear that Americans can compete well in F1. Le Mans in 1967 drove the point home forever - the Europeans watched Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt, in a Ford GT40 with a NASCAR motor in it, hand the Europeans their heads on a platter, and that after saying loudly that Foyt, an oval specialist, wasn't skilled enough to race at Le Mans competitively.
Open wheel racing is dying in the States, the ludicrous oval racing is killing drivers.
This year's Indycar Series, which is rather more competitive than in years past, says otherwise. They just got their new cars and new engines, and newcomer Chevrolet is making Honda work for their wins. (Lotus, on the other hand, has embarassed themselves repeatedly....) The new bodywork and car changes are coming for next year, and Dan Wheldon (RIP

) is one of just six drivers to die in open wheel oval accidents in the last two decades. (The other five were Jovy Marcelo, Scott Brayton and Tony Renna at Indianapolis, Greg Moore at Fontana and Paul Dana at Homestead.) Six in 20 years sounds like a lot, but the deaths of Moore and Renna were freak accidents, and oval racing has always been more popular than road racing in America, though the latter is now gaining popularity. America has
two competitive top-level sports car racing series now, too.
F1 is coming back big time, a race in Texas this year, with New Jersey coming in next year and the likelihood of a Mexican race bringing the number of races in the US time zones to at least 5.
I don't doubt that Austin and New Jersey will do well, but the former is almost certainly going to hose other racing and the latter is still a total unknown, though the track layout looks excellent. F1's history of street races in America is not good to say the least. I'm hoping for success, and I think Austin will easily get it, but I'm not convinced about New Jersey. I'd love to be wrong, mind you. As for Mexico, not happening. There isn't a good track in Mexico that can host F1 aside from Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, which now has a baseball stadium in the middle of it (Champ Car actually ran a course through the stadium) and wouldn't be anywhere near F1 standards. Having an event in Argentina, which their organizers REALLY want, would add another one in our timezone, too.
So definitely the potential to create interest and to build a following, especially if Indycar continues to struggle. Have the first couple US races be considered classics, a few more of the big names in Indycar pull out etc and you'll be half way there.
Indycar isn't big enough to have its best carry F1 into the big leagues, and nobody in Indycar aside from maybe Penske and Ganassi have anything like the $$$ to go into Formula One. And more to the point, Indycar now has professional management and unity, two things it hasn't had in two decades. It's got nowhere to go but up, and I quite firmly believe it will go that way. And more to the point, I think if anything big success for Indycar as well the American Le Mans and Grand Am Rolex Sports Car series will help F1 in North America.
Further off a competitive American driver would help, not sure if there are any particularly talented ones in the junior categories in Europe at the moment, ideally a new Andretti or similar 'big' name that would appeal to American audiences would be great, but they really need to be in Europe from an early age as frankly the standard in the open wheel series in the US is nowhere near good enough to produce a top drawer F1 driver.
Again, I would beg to differ this. The F1 circuit has tons of worthy pilots who don't find rides in Europe and who then go stateside. Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan, Dan Wheldon, EJ Viso, Takuma Sato, Sebastien Bourdais, Mike Conway and Adam Carroll all worked hard and well towards F1 seats (Bourdais got one on account of his demolition of the Champ Car field in 2004-2007), but there are lots of them who have come to the Indycar series. Some have thrived, some haven't. I think if you took guys like Ryan Hunter-Reay, Graham Rahal, Marco Andretti, Charlie Kimball (who was a regular in Europe for years) and J.R. Hildebrand and put them in F1 they would do just fine. Marco is extraordinarily talented but luckless, Rahal has got a B-team Ganassi ride which isn't working for him or Kimball. The others, however, are kicking ass. Hunter-Reay has won three straight in the Indycar series, Hildebrand lost the 2011 Indy 500 because he crashed out of the lead in the last corner. Not talented enough? Pffft. I'd take RHR or Hildebrand or my hometown boy James Hinchcliffe over anybody in the bottom half of the current F1 grid any day of the week.