Stop the Press: Obama Resurrected

PARIS – I’ve written a few times on Folha about the acceleration of time being one of the biggest features of the Contemporary Era.

But honestly, I have my doubts if it is really time being accelerated, or if it is journalism that is adopting the “fast food” model: fast to make and fast to eat.

The most recent case is happening around Barack Obama. Just one year and two months, he took over as a kind of new Messiah: the man who had come to make the “change,” whatever this really meant.

He began, in fact, launching initiatives here and there, internal and external. Not long after, his reputation began to fall. Earlier this year, he lost the election to fill the vacancy of the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat. It was enough to pronounce Obama dead and buried, as the fierce, reactionary right-wing movements, like the “Tea Party,” arrived on the scene.

The House of Representatives approved Obama’s Health Plan, which was not yet two months old. It’s important to say that it was not the original, but the best possible one in those circumstances.

Here’s when Obama plays an important part in the analysis.

In other words, the president of United States in one year and two months went from glory to the tomb, and from there, directly to heaven.

It seems like a very short time for much movement. It is most reasonable to believe that neither Obama had died or, consequently, was resurrected today.

After all, the Democratic majority continued to exist in both houses of Congress. Just one more senator was not so important if you see the result of the election in the House: 34 democrats voted against the approved health plan. It is reasonable to assume that, with 60 senators, as it was before the death of Democrat Ted Kennedy, or 59 as it was after the defeat in Massachusetts, there would be defections like what had happened in the House. But the majority wins and has won.

And the victory doesn’t mean that we won’t have more “tea parties,” even if the polls are favorable to the president.

Remember, moreover, that losing prestige in the polls doesn’t change the fact that what counts is the popular vote, not the poll. With the outcome of regional elections on Sunday here in France, Obama reasons that Prime Minister François Fillon made a disaster for the government of Nicolas Sarkozy (the opposition won in 21 of the 22 regions that divides the country): He conceded defeat but said that the government is guided by the national result that elected Sarkozy almost three years ago, rather than regional figures.

I don’t want these comments to neither minimize the favorable impact of the vote Sunday or unfavorable impact of Sarkozy’s result in the same day. I just think it is prudent to put things in perspective: It was a historic victory, yes, but it doesn’t mean that just because of it, Obama will also win the war in Afghanistan, boot sanctions on Iran or obtain peace in the Middle East.

I hope that he gets all that, but let’s be reasonable: Death and rebirth of presidents rarely occur in the same speed, which so happened to be Obama’s case.