Obama Weighed Down by Financial Crisis

Opinion polls at half mast, partial elections lost … According to the Washington Post, the president of the United States has to push the panic button if he wants to be re-elected in 2012.

It’s certainly a minor incident, that nearly went unnoticed, except American televisions rebroadcast the ceremony. On Sept. 11, during the ground zero commemoration ceremony, President Obama takes the platform to read a psalm. A moment of silence. The former president George W. Bush, who was in office at the time of the attacks takes his turn to speak to read a letter from Abraham Lincoln to the mothers of soldiers killed during the Civil War.

A round of applause for this man that we believed was hated, whose departure we said goodbye to like the end of a test, and whose successor was elected all the more triumphantly as Americans were impatient to turn the page on two terms catastrophic for their country. Why the applause? Is it critical acclaim, Chirac style, that often supports a former head of state who we know has turned his or her back on politics? Or is it a mirror image of the defeat that Bush suffered when he left the White House, and a way of informing Obama that he has lost popularity, at least among some Americans?

Symptomatic defeat

Because fourteen months from the presidential election, Obama, contrary to his French counterpart, entered the electoral campaign very early, his image continues to deteriorate in the public view. This is evident from the congressional election that took place this week in New York, a territory held by Democrats for 80 years and whose loss was considered an anti-Obama referendum by all the Washington experts. The victory of Republican David Turner over Democrat David Weprin in a Jewish, working class neighborhood should never have happened in the electoral district that voted 55 percent for Obama in 2008. But it is at the very least due to a negative turn of events that on the same day, Republican Mark Amodei, a Congressional candidate as well, was elected in the state of Nevada. “Is it time for Obama to push the panic button?” the Washington Post asked on Wednesday.

Abysmal debt

Like many Western leaders, Obama is crippled by the financial crisis. The abysmal level of debt, the lack of growth, and the unemployment at European rates contribute to discrediting one who many, even in his own party, reproach for his indecision. The economic circumstances making it even worse in America is that they don’t have the social shock-absorbers of Europe. For the 9 percent without jobs, unemployment is a descent into hell from their charming suburban cottage to the soup kitchen. The equation is all the more impossible to solve as the most ferocious adversaries of the president, the Republican inclined tea party, tend to burst into flames at the idea of improving social systems and even want to put the ones they actually have into question.

During the last televised Republican debate, the CNN moderator asked what should be done for a young man who canceled his health insurance as a result of unemployment and ended up in a car accident. “Let him fend for himself,” the room responded. Even if it was less radical, the current front runner in Republican polls, Texas Governer Rick Perry, continues to characterize the health care system — social security’s embryo — put in place by Obama a “monstrous lie on this generation,” and a “Ponzi scheme” (the scam that allowed Bernie Madoff to grow richer while ruining his creditors).

Be astonished that there are serious differences between the United States and Europe for addressing the number of problems caused by the financial crisis.