What Could Have Been, but Was Not

President Obama’s second term is already drawing to a close, and the time has come to ask ourselves if his legacy will go down shrouded in history instead of in a tragic halo. The sense of tragedy emerges not only from seeing someone’s life dashed — for he could no longer accomplish his best ambitions — but it is, in no small measure, also a result of the frustration of those who had hoped to see the hero lit by the glow of glory from the stalls, and must now bid him farewell in silence or with half-hearted applause: the longing of what could have been, but was not. We do the math, and the math we expected does not add up.

In “The Butler,” one of those movies whose destiny is to be tear-inducing, Forest Whitaker plays the black servant who has been with several U.S. presidents throughout the decades, setting the table in silence and brushing suits. One of the most grotesque scenes shows him aiding Lyndon B. Johnson, whom we see through the half-open door of the bathroom with his pants down as he pushes — victim of chronic constipation. In a different scene, the butler, now an old man, watches on TV with eyes full of tears the ceremony in which Obama, the first black president in U.S. history, takes his oath. It is his own vindication.

Therein lies the great contrast, from which the possible fable is born: the first black president of the most powerful nation in the world. Before, in the distribution of roles, black people were left to serve as butlers of the powerful or mourn the death of their benefactors — from Abraham Lincoln, icon of the liberation of the slaves, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt — like in the classic image of photographer Ed Clark, the tear-stained black soldier who plays the “Goin’ Home” tune on his accordion as the president’s coffin passes by.

That is the issue. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has recently said that Obama will only be remembered for being the “first black American that got elected president.” Moore, who has come to disappoint me because every day I see more and more of the demagogue in him, might be right. But perhaps, rather than his own fault, the president’s failure is being determined by the antibodies that the powerful conservative establishment generated upon his arrival to the White House, precisely because he is black.

Obama made a triumphal entry under the spotlight, and it looked like he was going to be able to turn history around, not only because many prejudices were left behind, and the rights of a democratic and egalitarian society — as diverse in its makeup as the American one is — seemed to finally prevail, but also because of his proposal of libertarian and liberating notes, ranging from immigration policies to social justice, and to the definitive closing of the Guantanamo prison, seeking to restore respect of human rights.

Soon, the president’s brilliant rhetoric and memorable phrases began hopelessly distancing themselves from reality, in the midst of a fierce and bitter domestic battle in which the central mission of the Republican Party, in the hands of the fundamentalist faction of the tea party, was to hinder everything Obama did or proposed. From the backstage of this concerted conspiracy always came an unmistakable but veiled scent of racism.

Maybe his good will led him to enter the stage with a false step because in the beginning of his first term, when he had the chance to take initiatives on his own and advance the essential points of his program of change, he stubbornly insisted that he would not act unless it was by consensus and with Republican support. He wasted time, reached the end of his first term, received the benefit of the doubt from voters, but after he was elected again he remained bogged down.

And bogged down he remained also in the international arena, the most complex the world has faced in recent history, from the traditional U.S. conflict with Iran to the ever-renewed confrontation between Israel and Palestine; the “Arab Springs” that ended in dictatorship again, or anarchy, as in Libya; the war of multiple forces in Syria, the deadly trap that has always been Afghanistan, the Russian advance toward its old imperial borders in Ukraine, with the ruthless cynicism of Putin, who never fails to wear his poker face, in between.

And now — the Islamic caliphate, distributed between Syria and Iraq, presented as the worst nightmare, full of confusions and atrocities, like all nightmares that make us lose sleep. Surely any U.S. president would fight this war of drones against the jihadi, and maybe this is why, when announcing his crusade against the Islamic caliphate, Obama had to wear the robe of the elder President Bush, searching for allies to carry it forward; but this will not be a war capable of restoring him to his former glory. It will remain a nightmare that could extend through the end of his term, and his successor could inherit it.

It’s not strange for a U.S. president to pass on a war far from U.S. borders, like all wars this country has fought in modern times, but Obama will walk that final road stumbling, with no spotlights on, always under the uncompromising and fierce siege of domestic fundamentalists who never wanted to see him sitting in the Oval Office of the White House.

He now appears in pictures as an old man, grown gray under the burden of frustrations, now so far away from the celebratory music that accompanied his entry into the glory of that distant kingdom, while the music and the kingdom fade away into the misfortune-laden air.