Barack Obama: The Illusion and Limits of Power

To govern is also to know how to raise hopes and come across as proactive. For his sixth State of the Union address, Barack Obama has not failed to uphold his reputation as an excellent speaker, but in a democracy like the United States, leading also means knowing how to work with the delicate balance of power between Congress and the White House. Faced with a House of Representatives dominated by the Republican opposition, the president threatened to act by presidential decree if the measures he announced were not adopted.

In the great tradition of Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Johnson’s “Great Society,” Barack Obama firmly claims to be a social Democrat without being a democratic Socialist. Today, his goal is to combat inequality and take action to help the middle class. Americans, among whom the gap between rich and poor has widened in the past few years, largely share these goals.

However, the U.S. remains deeply divided over the role that government should play in society and the economy because it remains divided on health care reform. By acting unilaterally through executive order, the U.S. president simply risks downsizing his ambitions yet again, and the draft for a new minimum wage law, which has almost no chance of passing in Congress, was designed to give a financial boost to 17 million Americans.

However, his promise to unilaterally raise the minimum wage for federal contractors by 40 percent — to $10.10 an hour — would only affect 250,000 employees, and with a simple signature, he can neither raise the minimum federal wage for everyone — especially not in a country where the states themselves can set the minimum — nor reform immigration law to legalize [the status of] millions of illegal immigrants, or decide by himself on the federal budget or tax revenues.

It is obvious that Obama is not the only one responsible for this standstill. His opposition is blocking almost all of his initiatives, but Obama is also having trouble convincing some representatives in his own camp. Of course, he finally emerged victorious from the budget tussle with his opposition in October after two weeks of a government shutdown.

However, his victory may be short-lived, and the question of whether or not to raise the debt ceiling may come up again at the end of February. In any case, the 2008 promise of “Yes, we can” seems a forgotten dream, especially since it is unlikely that Democrats will gain a majority in the House or the Senate in the midterm elections next November.