Obama Faced with Superman Syndrome

Even Clint Eastwood, the chair whisperer, admits to crying four years ago when hearing Obama’s “Yes We Can.” Republicans refined their strategy during their convention in Florida which has just ended. It was a frontal attack but it played the disappointment card.

Obama has disappointed. “I wish Obama had succeeded…” Even Mitt Romney tried to sound sincere, a strategy undertaken four years ago which will perhaps bear its fruit in a few weeks.

Obama the Messiah

Disappointment is determined by the amount of hope raised. In the middle of the 2008 campaign, Republican John McCain’s team produced a negative advertisement presenting Obama as a man who is not a messiah, “The One,” a new Moses.

That didn’t work; Obama was elected. However, taking his turn to poke fun four years later, Mitt Romney revived the myth of a messianic Obama. And this time with the deep-rooted economic and political crisis, the speech seems to have been better received:

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

Superman Syndrome

“My friends have made the American people think me a sort of superman, able to cope successfully with the most difficult and complicated problems…. They expect the impossible of me and should there arise conditions with which the political machinery is unable to cope, I will be the one to suffer.”

These prophetic words weren’t pronounced by Barack Obama but by Herbert Hoover, who was about to be swept up by the economic crisis and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the risk is the same today for his distant Democratic successor.

In 2008, Obama clearly sensed the danger in being presented as a messiah or superman. So, three weeks before the election during the Al Smith Dinner in New York, the Democratic candidate said before a laughing audience:

“Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth.

“Many of you — many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for ‘That One.’

“And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn’t think I’d ever run for president.”

Nail Superman to the Ground

The fact remains that the problem of disproportionate expectations wasn’t solved by his election. And there too, Obama sensed the danger. In November 2008, on the very night of his victory, he prudently declared, “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term…”

Not exactly the rhetoric of a savior. His supporters themselves were clearly more moderate than director Spike Lee who, one month after the victory, stated that historians should from now on say “BB” (before Barack) and “AB” (after Barack).

In 1930, Walter Lippmann, the greatest observer of American political life at the time, perfectly expressed the risk for Hoover (and Obama):

“It is through creating certain expectations, that the Hoover legend established a standard by which the population judges him and I think most observers will admit that while his first year finished in an atmosphere of light disappointment, a partial cause is the real Hoover’s inability to live up to the Hoover legend.”*

For Republicans, the tactic is clear: Bring the “true” Obama face to face with his “legend.” Nail Superman to the ground.

But this strategy is very risky; it demands something paradoxical and dangerous, and that is reminding us of what the legend was four years ago. Using the nostalgia method, this is something Democrats count on to revive the legend. See you next week for the Democratic National Convention.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, translated accurately, could not be verified.