Obama: From Hope to the Lesser of Two Evils

Faded by his own indecisiveness and worn down by four years in the White House, Barack Obama was re-elected for a second presidential term yesterday, after obtaining an authoritative majority of Electoral College votes and clearly prevailing over his Republican Party rival, Mitt Romney.

Although Obama’s triumph is faultless in the peculiar and barely-democratic U.S. electoral logic, in which citizens vote for Electoral College delegates, not for presidential candidates, it is inevitable to contrast the advantage obtained by the African-American politician yesterday with the overwhelming result he obtained four years ago. In 2008 he arrived in the Oval Office with the desired backing of the majority of voter demographics and with a difference of more than 10 million votes over his then-rival John McCain. Whereas yesterday, through difficult trials, he achieved the electoral votes necessary to retain the White House.

Such a difference not only brings to mind the anti-democratic character of our neighboring state, disgraceful according to modern criteria, but also puts into perspective the erosion of Obama’s image during the last four years. The leader has lost the halo of hope that accompanied him to the polls in 2008 and has become a more “establishment” politician. He has departed from his original pretensions as a social reformer and has become an administrator of the washed-up neoliberal model, incapable of reigning in the speculative interests that caused the economic collapse of 2008-2009. He has distanced himself from the more advanced aspects of his agenda of change (the reorientation of budgetary priorities toward the attention of the majority groups, immigration and financial reform, expansion of the public health care system and moderation of U.S. warmongering and colonialism, among other aspects) with sights on winning the sympathies of the conservative electorate and groups of real power in our northern neighbor. Therefore, the first presidential term has represented, for the liberal and progressive wings of U.S. society, the beginning of a period of disillusionment about the prospect of fulfilling the internal directional changes that the country requires in all spheres.

It is difficult to think that Obama’s second mandate will be accompanied by a recovery of that will for the superpower’s political, economic and social transformation, given that the historic tendency of U.S. presidents when re-elected is to moderate the most radical aspects of their programmatic agendas. This occurred with the accommodation of the Washington government to financial and corporate interests during Bill Clinton’s second term and could also be said of the moderation of neoliberal fundamentalism and state terrorism during the second administration of George W. Bush.

If one takes into account that Obama himself took charge of toning down his program since his first presidential term, and in the following one will have to confront his second administration with a lower chamber dominated by the Republicans, it is foreseeable that, due to discouragement, the neighboring state will witness the total dissolution in the next four years of the broad informal coalition that carried Obama to power in 2008.

In summary, in contrast with the feeling of enthusiasm that accompanied Obama’s arrival to the White House four years ago, the electoral victory achieved yesterday can be explained more as a rejection of Republican conservatism than as support of a vague and blurry Democratic proposal. If Obama’s rise to the presidency four years ago was the result of a widespread sentiment of hope, his stay in office now arises from a climate of resignation.