The Bell Tolls for Obama

Obama is facing huge pressures and an agenda that seems to expand daily, as his policy dreams collide with the reality of governance

Obama is facing huge pressures and an agenda that seems to expand daily, as his policy dreams collide with the reality of governance

THE DAY AFTER Barack Obama was elected United States’ president, the satirical newspaper The Onion led with the headline, ‘Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job’. Pointing to a workload that would include ‘having to please more than 300 million Americans’ and ‘cleaning up the messes other people left behind’, the article concluded: ‘It just goes to show you, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.’

Neither, it seems, can a president.

When Obama took office in late January, his popularity was soaring—over 80 per cent in some polls. But by early February, as the contraction of the American economy accelerated and Obama bumbled bipartisanship and a few Cabinet selections, early critiques appeared. Conservatives attacked Obama’s stimulus package as too large and progressive. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman said the plan was unlikely to succeed.

Then job losses increased and the stock market hit 12-year lows as February bled into March. The New York Times’ columnist Frank Rich spoke of a “paralysed” administration.

A mere 50 days into the Obama era, an Internet ad campaign appeared on liberal websites, asking,‘Do you regret your vote for Obama?’

It got worse. After accepting $180 billion in government bailout money, the American International Group (AIG) announced in mid-March that it had paid more than $165 million in bonuses to its financial services executives. A media firestorm ensued, with the American public infuriated that their tax dollars had rewarded some of the very people who wrecked the economy. Many blamed Obama. A week later the Congressional Budget Office found that the president’s proposed budget would result in deficits $2.3 billion greater than the Obama team’s initial estimate and four times the deficit left by Bush. New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg—whom Obama had nominated for Commerce Secretary a month prior—said the new report “confirms that under the president’s plan, our debt will increase to shocking levels that are simply unsustainable and will devastate future economic opportunities for our children and grandchildren.”

Then at month’s end, the President of the European Union, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, called Obama’s fiscal package and financial bailout “a way to hell”.

No wonder Obama’s hair is turning grey.

Is it stress? “I’m getting grey hair myself,” he once told a group of elderly voters. And according to a 2006 study, the average age of onset of greying for African-Americans is the mid-40s, which means the 47-year-old Obama is right on schedule. It helps that the president has retained his mirth. During a recent TV interview, he was smiling so often that the interviewer asked the president if he were punch-drunk. “There’s gotta be a little gallows humour to get you through the day,” Obama responded. “If you had said to us a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq, which is still a pretty serious problem, I don’t think anybody would have believed it.”

He has a point. Consider the issues vying for presidential attention: a comprehensive new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, a global economic crisis, a deepening domestic recession and instability in the American financial sector, a bloody drug war in Mexico that’s spilling across the border and a budding humanitarian crisis in Darfur. This list does not include rapprochement with Iran, growing pressure to help broker Middle East peace, becalming North Korea or the president’s three big domestic goals—healthcare reform, energy independence and improving America’s schools system.

Any two or three of the above crises would leave mere mortals curling up into the foetal position. It’s probably no surprise that past presidents were hit hard: George W Bush and Jimmy Carter left office not only grey, but looking wrinkled and wan; Bill Clinton, grey too, had heart surgery just after he left; and both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, and Dwight Eisenhower all developed hypertension at the White House. Ageing expert Dr Michael Roizan estimates that presidents age at twice the normal rate—which may explain why Obama looked run down at a March 24 press conference.

Still, he was defiantly confident as he stepped up to the microphone. There had been some good news the previous day: Obama’s bank rescue plan, laid out by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, had drawn rave reviews and New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had announced AIG executives would pay back a good chunk of their $165 million in bonuses. Obama hit his usual talking points—creating jobs and stabilising the banking sector, the need for health care reform and better education—and looked toward this week’s G-20 in London, where he would urge world leaders to avoid protectionism and improve the international regulatory system. The president believed he was “restoring a sense of confidence in the ability of the United States to assert global leadership”.

For now, bouquets are likely to arrive with less frequency than brickbats. But it’s telling that Obama has remained confident and consistent. He may be a victim of his ambition, but he has never wavered or waffled and has already accepted blame for failure not once but twice. And no one can argue that Barack Obama is not in charge.

That does not mean he’s out of the woods. Credit markets remain shaky, Afghanistan slouches toward chaos, unemployment rolls grow, the economy is still shrinking and dozens of desks at the departments of State, Treasury, and Health remain empty.

But these troubles pale in comparison to those faced by another skinny American president from Illinois a century and a half ago. By the time Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861, seven southern states had seceded and the union was splintering over slavery and commerce. Within a few months, the Civil War had all but begun and northerners were impatient for either military action or political negotiation. History tells us that Lincoln stood firm, and ultimately freed the slaves, saved the nation and set the foundation for a country that became the world’s greatest power.

Obama has a long way to go before earning comparisons, but one hopes the current president is comforted by the lesson of his predecessor’s successes: that even in the darkest of days, hope remains; this is a country that can be brought back from the brink.

About The Author

David Lepeska