Despite Naive Expectations, Obama Cannot Walk on Water

Barack Obama = Superman. Not many Americans would agree. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening to shake their basic sense of trust.

There is, among many Americans, a basic sense of trust — mostly scorned and sometimes feared by foreigners — that their president, the most powerful man in the world, can save humanity from evil, lower taxes, and make the sun rise whenever he wants. For almost two months now, Barack Obama has been hounded by this childlike faith. He should seal the oil well in the Gulf and punish and loot BP to make the victims rich. He should show toughness and emotion while showing Americans and the world that the United States is bigger than BP. As film director, Spike Lee, implored, “If there’s any one time to go off, this is it, because this is a disaster.”

The result of these unreasonable demands — which are getting louder in the American media — is an annoyed, rattled president who is using crude commentary to deflect public anger away from himself and drown out his true impotence: “We talk to these folks because they potentially had the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Awakening Memories of Jimmy Carter

To the dismay of those who once believed that he walked on water, Barack Obama is not Aquaman, the comic book superhero, and not even a king who can disown and chase BP out of the country. On top of this, he is not a persuasive populist. Instead, he is still the professorial, cool, contemplative man people found to be so wonderful after the “cowboy” George W. Bush. But now the same news media that idolized him is counting him out. After almost 60 days of this oil disaster, people are thinking of Jimmy Carter and the 444 days of captivity 52 Americans experienced in Tehran, something Carter did not survive politically.

[Then,] it was not only the humiliation by the mullahs, but rather an endless series of crises that left America and its President looking weak: Soviet tanks in Afghanistan, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and the oil cartel blackmail. The bad news flowed out of televisions nonstop, and as the days in Tehran were counted, Carter stumbled further into the abyss of unreasonable demands and disappointment. At the end, one could feel sorry for him. Voters were uneasy. Then Ronald Reagan came and won, making it morning again in a fearful America.

Reagan’s Gallows Humor Calmed America

Obama knew why he admired Reagan early on. American presidents are evaluated after their time in office on how they have proved themselves in crises and unforeseen situations. Reagan’s gallows humor in the operating room after the assassination attempt (“I hope you’re Republicans”) was powerful. Even his curious blending of silver screen quotations and stories were forgiven because he couldn’t help but laugh at the same time, and he restored a demoralized America’s belief in itself.

This belief is being shaken again by two ongoing, probably unwinnable wars. Obama inherited them, like the financial crisis, excessive government debt and, to top it off, a smug and paralyzed Congress. There are serious people who say Obama is losing because he is too good for the country. He is too smart, too ideological, too classy and therefore too alone.

Canonization Does Little for the President

But such canonization is of no use to the president like the outcry that he should finally do something. But what should he do? Seal the oil well with an atomic bomb? Arrest Tony Hayward, and have all Britons deported? Some demagogues have been starting to make a business out of saying that anyone with a British accent speaking about the oil spill on American television is lying.

A spiritual relative of the childlike faith in the omnipotence of the president is America’s faith in technology. Just as Barack Obama probably believed too long in his administration’s power of reason, good will, and common sense, too many Americans have a naïve belief in what is technically feasible. They, like their President, seriously believed that when their government allowed an oil company to drill at depths of one mile that there must also have been appropriately reviewed emergency plans for the worst case scenario.

Belief in Technology is the Twin of Belief in the President

The shock of Americans now recognizing that supervision never existed and cannot even be tolerated by their pro-business system is now erupting in anger at the politicians. A growing majority of Americans considers the impotence of their leaders in this crisis to be worse than the failure of the Bush Administration after “Katrina.” When Obama sometimes asks critics what the government could have and should have done differently, he wearily reports their “answer is silence.”* Obama is fighting back intellectually against those who are trivializing the matter and expect him to be the nation’s chief psychiatrist. It’s doubtful whether he can fight back against it politically.

It is true the oil spill is keeping America in captivity. Therefore, freeing America cannot be done either by desire for a messiah or with empty threats by its politicians. It will only occur with patience and by filtering through the humiliation to find some humility — the humility to seriously question the American view of the world and to contemplate, once again, energy policy, the belief in technology and even the role of the president.

*Editor's note: This quote, accurately translated, cannot be verified. It appears to be a literary allusion.