Comet Obama crashes into the crater between rhetoric and reality

WHO will ever forget January 20, 2009? In America and around the world, it was truly a great day. It shouldn’t have mattered but for someone of colour to assume leadership of what we used to call the “free world” counted for quite a lot.

Even though his family weren’t picking cotton, for many Americans Barack Obama’s election was atonement for the sin of slavery.

A good half of Americans, and many more internationally, were doubly delighted to see the back of George Bush.

But after the party comes the hangover and it’s been pretty much all downhill since then. Last week wasn’t a good week for anything, so horrendous was the news from Haiti, but Obama can’t have been entirely displeased that the first anniversary of his inauguration got buried.

You might have thought being only the third American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize — and this in his first year in office — would have propelled Barack Obama to the highest popularity levels ever. You couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, one special Senate election for one seat changed the narrative about his presidency overnight.

Scott Brown’s win was a shock, a stunning negative verdict on the Democrats. Massachusetts is probably the most traditionally liberal state in the US, and the contest was to replace Ted Kennedy, the liberal pin-up of the Democratic Party until his death last August. At one point, Martha Coakley, the Democrats’ candidate, was 30 points ahead.

But the Democrats were arrogant. They treated the long-time Kennedy seat as if they owned it. A crime wave by state legislators — including one allegedly caught on video stuffing a bribe into her bra — reminded voters of the corruption one-party states invariably breed.

Now, the very Senate seat occupied by America’s most dogged advocate of universal health insurance will become the vote that could block Obama’s healthcare plan.

How did it all go so badly wrong? Just a year ago, Obama’s elevation was celebrated as the start of a “transformative” change in American politics.

After Massachusetts, many expect the Democrats to lose badly in the November mid-term elections. “If I don’t win, 2010 is going to be hell for Democrats,” Martha Coakley predicted. She might well be proved right.

Perhaps it’s unrealistic to think in terms of lasting political realignments anyway. We all, on both sides of the Atlantic, live in a world in which our loyalties towards just about everything — celebrities, partners, brands of detergent — transfer far more readily than past generations could ever have imagined.

Massachusetts was not a one-off, anyway; this was Obama’s third electoral bruising. He won in Virginia and New Jersey in 2008 only to see his party lose the governorship of both states in November last year.

Democrats like to pretend that Obama was not a factor. None of the candidates was particularly strong. US unemployment is at 10%. Nevertheless, Obama went on the stump in all three states arguing his agenda would be imperilled if Republicans won and in all three voters just shrugged.

The international community was also supposed to fall under Obama’s spell. Not in Copenhagen. Obama went there twice: to campaign for the 2016 Olympic Games to go to Chicago, and for a global climate change treaty. He was denied both times. And then there are the deaf ears in Russia, North Korea and Iran to his fine words.

With the benefit of hindsight it seems the 2008 presidential election was all about him; Obama’s victory didn’t translate into broader support for the Democrats. The support was for Obama the man, not his policies. Only a minority of Americans are in favour of his specific proposals.

Some of Obama’s stalwart supporters feel anguish at what they see as a betrayal of his campaign’s promises, while many of his longtime critics feel vindicated in their initial scepticism. He said he would support gay marriages but ran away from that issue faster than Tiger Woods hot-footed it when his wife swung a three-iron in his direction. It’s the same on Iraq and on Guantanamo.

Obama admits there is a problem. In a recent speech, he said: “Sometimes, I get a little frustrated when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something.” Not only is his incrementalist approach uninspiring — the opposite of the ‘transformational’ change that was promised — but splitting the difference often ends up being the worst of all worlds.

His administration has been a case study in “continuity we can believe in”. Tonight (our time) he will deliver his State of the Union address. It’s an opportunity to fashion a new beginning, a new direction. He can fold the disappointments of the past into the fresh face of the years ahead. He has already signalled with his tax on banks that he is going to adopt more populist gestures in his second year.

But all the signs are that Team Obama don’t really get it. Their only flaw, they think, lies in not immediately realising the extent of the mess bequeathed by Bush. Responding to last week’s defeat, the president said: “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry and they’re frustrated not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Hmm. People are so angry and frustrated at George W Bush that they’re voting for Republicans? In Massachusetts? In the administration’s distorted worldview, though, last Tuesday’s vote was a plea for more Obama, not less — as if he hasn’t already delivered more speeches and given more interviews in his first year than any previous president. Expect lots more banal rhetoric full of “let me be clear” followed by worn-out generalities.

STILL, Obama is in a stronger political position than Bill Clinton was after his first year. He has had his debacle earlier. And the Republicans’ triumph is overstated. They are not offering anything in the way of counter-proposals and they still have a lot of work to do in terms of finding a credible and inclusive candidate and crafting a positive message. It’s far too early to say Obama looks vulnerable in 2012.

Does any of this matter to us? Well, actually yes. All comparisons are odious and you might think drawing any similarities between Enda Kenny and Barack Obama is particularly unfair. No one would make the mistake of calling the Fine Gael leader “The One”, for instance.

But in some ways politics is politics the world over. Just as every political hack wanted to learn from Obama’s stunning victories, first over Hillary Clinton and then John McCain, so anyone with designs on national leadership wants to avoid the disillusionment that has set in with America’s 44th president.

So the lessons are: don’t over-promise; don’t believe your own rhetoric; don’t imagine it’s all about you; don’t rely on the other lot’s unpopularity; don’t confuse personal popularity with party popularity or vice-versa; don’t interpret one victory as some always-and-all-time shift of the tectonic plates; and, above all, don’t underestimate the cynicism out there about politicians generally — even ones of the stature of Barack Hussein Obama.