The Modest Obama

Four years ago, when he was elected president of the United States, Barack Obama promised “change.” At the Democratic Convention, in formally accepting the nomination for another term, Obama repeated the slogan, but referring to himself said, “Times have changed… So have I.” Today, Obama reveals that he is much more modest than that political meteor who defeated the Republicans and mobilized the country with electrifying promises in 2008. Instead of representing the “new,” Obama says that he just wants to finish the job — that is, get the United States out of crisis.

As if illustrating the seriousness of the situation, the day after the president’s speech, the August unemployment figures came out. The index went down from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent, but the number of new jobs created — 96,000 — was lower than expected. And the reduction in the index occurred largely because more people stopped looking for jobs. It has now been 43 months of unemployment above eight percent, the longest period since the Great Depression. Obama has spent his entire term under this enormous shadow, and now he asks Americans not to expect that a solution to the problem relies only on the power of his pen. It wasn’t for nothing that, at the podium, he recalled the example of Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrat president who, according to Obama, dealt with the economic collapse in the ‘30s by means of “common effort” and “shared responsibility.”

Obama admitted that his handling of the administration during this crisis could have been better. It is a big contrast with the confident president of old, who made the mistake of believing in the image of himself created by his awed sympathizers right after the election — that of a man destined to make history as the first African American to occupy the White House and, nonetheless, as a politician who would act above partisan arguments. But the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, do not recognize this image. On the contrary: They made clear, setting a tone of violent ideological conflict, that they would not give a single vote that could promote a president considered “socialist.” The climax of this confrontation was in 2011, when the United States was on the brink of defaulting because the Republican congressmen tried to impede, until the last minute, the government from raising the debt ceiling.

The climate of tension in Congress will not be any different if Obama is reelected because the polls show that the Republicans can keep their majority in the House, where they have 241 of the 435 seats, and even gain control of the Senate, where they occupy 47 of the 100 seats. On Nov. 6, in addition to voting for the president and the entire House, the voters will choose 33 Senators — and there are no fewer than 15 marginal seats. The forecast is that neither Democrats nor Republicans will reach 60 seats in the Senate, the number necessary to avoid obstruction. That is, even if the winner is the Republican Mitt Romney, he will not have an easy life in Congress. Even in the House, where he would have the majority, there is no guarantee of peace for the Republican president, seeing as a good portion of his party colleagues considers him too moderate.

Considering this scenario, Obama — who has avoided blaming the government of his predecessor George W. Bush for the economic crisis — resolved to take an attitude of confrontation against the Republicans, attributing to them the paternity of the current problems. The tone was set by an inspired ex-President Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention, when he parodied the language of the opposition: “‘We [the Republicans] left him [Obama] a total mess, he hasn’t finished cleaning it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”

In fact, the responsibility for the damage to the American economy lies squarely with the Republican Party. However, the alternative that Obama is trying to present to the voters is not much more than a promise of good will and that is far short of the clear need for more boldness that will get the United States out of crisis.