After Obama

The truth is it wouldn’t really matter if Barack Obama were defeated in his attempt at re-election to the U.S. presidency. He has been a mediocre president in his first term, even worse when contrasted with the immense hopes awakened by his admirable campaign rhetoric, and in spite of the enormous advantage of being George W. Bush’s successor. Worse than that one: impossible.

But where change was expected of Obama, he has brought continuity. He has already shown his limits and they’re quite narrow: half-done health reform, neglected education and hesitant immigration policy. He has shown himself to be spineless in the rescue of the economy, cowed before the criticisms of his Republican adversaries. He is irresolute in the rescue of an economy sinking further into recession each day, never sufficiently rescued thanks to Obama’s fear of being accused of socialism or even communism by the right-wing, just like what happened to Franklin Roosevelt when he managed a government intervention to pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression. For this reason Obama has only intervened to rescue the banks and —with better judgment but still incompletely — the automobile industry, part of the real economy and not the juggling act of the financial economy. In foreign policy, Obama has even less to show. Just more of the same: He continued all of Bush’s wars, although he still promises an exit from them, and for fear of Republican criticism he took on the conflict in Libya. Prostrate with terror in front of the Israeli hawks, the Jewish lobby in Congress and those same Republicans, he’s on the verge of adding another in Syria and yet another, possibly the most terrible of them all, in Iran, without achieving victory in any of them. Meanwhile, he’s gained a taste for massacre, as shown by his joy —a child with a new toy —at the increasing use of drones, those little unmanned aircraft that serve to kill people from afar. Now that we’re on the subject of ethics, Obama hasn’t even been capable of closing Guantánamo prison, the embarrassment to his country.

Obama himself is already conscious that there is the high possibility of not winning re-election, something that rarely happens to U.S. presidents, so much so that in recent days he has appealed to the most improbable lifesavers: supporting homosexual marriage to win the vote of the LGBT community (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals; I don’t know why a jumble of such diverse people is called a “community”, but that is another matter). He also recently urged Europeans to do something to straighten out their economy —something he himself has been unable to do, or hasn’t dared to try, in his own territory. And so, going back to the start, Obama’s defeat wouldn’t matter much. But what would matter — a lot — is a victory for his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, whose chances rise every day in the polls. This is because Romney is a gaping cavern. Despite Obama’s disappointing rhetoric, returning the Republicans would be equivalent to re-electing Herbert Hoover after Roosevelt’s first term: a step back towards the abyss. But how can a Romney victory be avoided if Obama is the candidate? I’ve an idea. But I don’t know: It doesn’t seem to be an idea for such a serious magazine as SEMANA. In SoHo, maybe…