Barack Obama and the Unforgiving Course of History

If the economy does not measurably recover, Barack Obama is history. In the past 50 years, only four presidents have been awarded a second term — and only one was a Democrat.

As text appears on a dark background, a speaker declares: “For tens of thousands of Americans, the suffering began when Mitt Romney came to town.” Then an old woman appears on the screen — in black and white to increase the drama — and, with tears in her eyes, explains: “I feel that is the man who destroyed us.” This television ad is connected to a candidate who is already a “has been.” It was paid for by a man for whom money is no object: Sheldon Adelson, a casino owner in Las Vegas and close confidant of the former Speaker of the House who is contending for the Republican nomination for president. By March, when all of Romney’s other opponents had been defeated, Gingrich was still struggling against fate. Only Sheldon Adelson and his generous wallet continued on with him.

In mid-June, he reached deep into his pockets once again and transferred $10 million to a Super PAC, one of those political action committees that is allowed to pour unlimited money into the campaign. This time he gave the sum to — guess who — Mitt Romney. The super-rich are so obsessed with obstructing the re-election of Barack Obama that they will ignore all moral considerations. The incumbent may mock and gossip about that, but he’s only brought in a paltry $3 million recently.

President Obama will not have it easy. Not only is the Republican establishment against him, the economy has conspired against him and the statistics speak against his re-election. And how. In the past 50 years, only four presidents have been awarded a second term — and only one was a Democrat.

John F. Kennedy was shot during his campaign for a second term in Nov. 1963. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, did not try for one. Richard Nixon, a Republican, jumped over the hurdle, only to be chased from office in disgrace. Gerald Ford was defeated in his attempt to spend eight years in the White House by a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter. He, in turn, had to make room for Ronald Reagan, former governor of California.

Even war did not help. Reagan, who I will come back to, managed to win re-election despite adversarial circumstances. His successor, George Bush Sr., could not win a second term even after the triumphant Gulf War, losing to Bill Clinton, a Democrat and a supposed lightweight. Clinton, incidentally, was helped to re-election by his bitter political dispute with Newt Gingrich. George W. Bush stayed in office for eight long years before Barack Obama took office in 2008.

I was there to see Jimmy Carter’s defeat and Ronald Reagan’s reelection — we should remember these events not just because they are interesting, but also because Carter and Reagan are used in the current election campaign again and again as either positive or negative examples. Mitt Romney compares Obama with Carter on only one level, following the motto: We do not need another incompetent president who will lead the country into (or won’t lead it out of) misery. Obama counters: If the Republicans would listen to the spirit of Ronald Reagan just a little bit, then tax increases for the rich would have been approved long ago and the United States would be in a better financial situation. And he calls out to his Republican opponents, who hold him to be a European-style socialist: “That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan. He thought that, in America, the wealthiest should pay their fair share, and he said so.”

The Iran dilemma

In foreign policy, Obama and Carter admittedly have very little in common: While Iran and its nuclear program pose one of the greatest challenges for the current president, Carter’s Iran dilemma was incomparably more complex. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Tehran and — even worse for a president in an election season — radical Iranian students detained 52 U.S. diplomats for over a year in their own embassy in Tehran. The news anchor Walter Cronkite, who Americans trusted like no other, concluded each of his newscasts with the now famous words: “And that’s the way it is — on this (example) 256th day of captivity of the American hostages in Iran. Good night.” This gave Jimmy Carter many sleepless nights, even apart from the fact that the president had to struggle with greatly increased fuel and oil prices, just like Obama does now. His well-intentioned suggestion that his countrymen could reduce heating costs by wearing a warm sweater and sitting in front of a crackling fireplace came to no good.

From a European perspective, it’s easier to make comparisons between Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan: Both have been misjudged. Obama’s inexperience was generously overlooked; Europeans (and others) were happy to have a new face and a new foreign policy after George W. Bush. Few questioned whether this one-term senator had the stuff to implement his grandiose plans. With Ronald Reagan, we were much more critical: “Ha, an actor from California, yes, ok, he had been the governor of the most powerful state, but the people there are all kind of crazy.… How is he going to deal with the Soviet Union (which had just invaded Afghanistan)? How is he going to get the U.S. out of its economic crisis?” And that was — like today — serious: Inflation was in double digits, unemployment stood at around 9 percent and in some industries, such as the then more significant automotive industry, it was twice as high. Reagan cut social spending and put billions more into the defense budget.

But the man had something else: He exuded an irrepressible optimism that restored America’s faith in itself. And indeed, the economy recovered so much (inflation declined from 14 percent to 3 percent) that Reagan not only managed a second term, he trounced his opponent, Democrat Walter Mondale, winning the vote in 49 out of 50 states.

It was hardly a race. Of that, Obama can only dream. Everyone knows the race will be close. How close will depend not least on who will win the “swing states,” i.e. those states that might favor a Democrat, then a Republican. Seven of them, with a total of 85 (of the required 270) electoral votes, are now difficult to judge. Romney is trying to win those states that John McCain, Obama’s opponent in 2008, lost but that had supported George W. Bush four years before. That’s how he’s planning to get to the magic number of 270.

Bill Clinton managed the impossible in 1992, running against George H.W. Bush with the slogan, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Following this model, Mitt Romney takes every opportunity to claim that Barack Obama has no idea how to get out of the crisis. While Obama inherited the mess from his predecessor, the voters with their notoriously short-term memory have long ago forgotten. It has also not helped Obama that the Supreme Court has upheld his health care reform, that he oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden, that the troops have been withdrawn from Iraq and that those in Afghanistan will be home next year.

The last hope for Obama is his approval rating: Jimmy Carter won in 1976 with the same meager 41 percent Obama has now. But there’s one big difference: Carter’s negative rating at the time was 21 percent. Obama’s is exactly twice as high.

But, there’s a big BUT: The election is not held in July, and a lot can happen between now and November. The economy, for example, could measurably recover in the next four months. It’s possible, but not likely. If not, President Barack Obama’s history. We should prepare ourselves.