After Joshua

These are the final moments of an entire presidential phase. The Nov. 9 midterm elections, in which a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will be up for renewal, will most likely leave Barack Obama without majorities to continue governing with congressional support, something that the polls tend to steal from presidents after just two years from the beginning of their terms.

Extensive presidential powers allow governance without legislation from Congress, but only within limits, especially when it comes to passing budgets. This is how the Republicans will try to drown the Obama administration, as they did in 1994 with Bill Clinton, forcing the shutdown of parts of the government for lack of funds.

George W. Bush could rely on a Republican majority in Congress in 2002, after the events of Sept. 11, because he conducted his campaign as a war president to maintain high levels of support, as opposed to as a president facing an economic crisis, like Obama. The second midterm elections for Bush, in 2006, were the disaster expected after Hurricane Katrina. He became a lame duck, a threat now facing Obama if he does not know how to adapt to this new stage upon which the prospects of renewing his presidential mandate in 2012 will play.

Obama has begun to prepare himself for post-November. In addition, a good handful of his staff has preferred to find a new path before the expected electoral disaster forces them to do so summarily. Rahm Emmanuel, his chief of staff, has already departed. Part of his economic team has also dispersed: Lawrence Summers, Christina Romer and Peter Orszag. The departure of David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, is already taken for granted.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a legacy of the Bush administration, has hinted at his own imminent departure. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has inserted herself as the true number two in government, above Vice President Biden, has always sought the spotlight: she could have a new role in the next administration; but there is little doubt that she would like to be Vice President in 2012 and perhaps the presidential candidate in 2016.

Barack Obama belongs to the generation of Joshua, as expressed by The New Yorker editor David Remnick, in an article later converted into the first and most brilliant biography of the current U.S. president, The Bridge, which is now in Spanish bookstores. The biblical history is well known: Moses did not set foot in the Promised Land. It was his younger brother Joshua who completed the desert crossing which brought the Israelites to their destination.

Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader assassinated in 1968, was also a Moses who led a displaced people, but those who have achieved their freedom, like Joshua, have been Barack Obama and his generation. This history is rooted in the symbol of the bridge in Selma, where King began a peaceful march in 1965 that ended in a harsh repression and King in jail.

To understand who Obama is and the scope of his victory, Remnick presents a picture composed of various histories: the civil rights movement; decolonization in Kenya; political life in Chicago; slaveholding presidents; African-American religion; Obama’s academic curriculum at Columbia, Chicago and Harvard; the development of the African-American literary genre and its memories of emancipation; the Congressional Black Caucus; Clinton and his friends inside the White House; and finally Obama’s Democratic candidacy, the primaries, the Democratic convention and the campaign. Little has escaped Remnick’s critical eye, and he tells the story with a great sense of rhythm and tension, galvanized by the magnitude of the historic event recounted firsthand.

Obama could not have become president if the U.S. was not already full of Obamas: young African-Americans proud of their origins, instilled with an open and post-racial mentality, free from the anger of the oppressed and with responsibilities at the helm of communities, cities, businesses, and the country itself. His first two years offer a solid yet controversial balance: health care reform, economic stimulus in the face of crisis, Wall Street reform, withdrawal from Iraq, and above all, change to America’s image in the world.

However, his historic success is still the crossing of the bridge that separates Americans by the color of their skin. Such is the scale of his achievement that it is difficult to imagine Joshua himself could exceed Obama in imposing for the future a new and more powerful presidential profile.

(Correction: Moses’ brother was Aaron. Joshua was his successor in leading the Israelites, but had no family relationship. The editorial process plays cruel pranks, for which there is no excuse. I apologize.)