A Bad Time for Obama

It is excessive to blame the president for global and local disappointment with him.

There is no society that relies on the miracle-working of any politician, however charismatic he may be. [That] the recent electoral beating is Barack Obama’s responsibility is unanimous among Democrats and Republicans. If different societies rely on miracle-working, it is because of [that society's] backwardness and successive disappointments [in governance]. It has nothing to do with the society that is [deemed] responsible for worldwide security, which has seen a president it excessively trusted collapse. Forces [once] gathered in another [act of] abolition of slavery, a recollection of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy, and the expected transformation of geopolitical leadership. It was at that time that Obama’s first presidency was confirmed; lately, he has had to cope with two wars and the 2008 financial crisis.

Global complications create a difficult environment for governance. Local opinion disapproves of him and his management, maybe because it has not understood it. A second term has exhausted Obama, who has been a prisoner of what is wrongly called governability; that is to say, a counterbalance to impose political maneuvering and interest in the country that, paradoxically, represents democracy. Likewise, Obama wanted to change the operation and image of his own country, whose good intentions and capability against distant post-war period geopolitics are at the mercy of increasingly mad supranational unions. One of the Washington Post's headlines read, “Barack Obama, disappointer in chief.” The comparison with President Carter is not absurd.

Issues such as the Near East, Ukraine, the Asian emergency and Ebola defy profiles, however big they may be. “The problem is not Obama,” says a commentator; Tom, Dick and Harry are not the problem, either. Attributing social evolution to individuals, however outstanding they are, was contradicted long ago by science and collective productive conditions. The twilight of Obama undermines even more the trust that can be placed in any praise or survey. Crowds can be attracted by extreme attitudes within any opposition tactic: the Republicans and their tea party, the fearsome National Front in France. Here, strength and tradition are the tactics, sensible tactics aimed at being unnoticeable. Coarseness and stupidity are claimed to be part of the riots carried out by the opposing party. Discussions in which rhetoric and rationality educate the audience by showing them something different from primitive reasoning are being longed for here, and everywhere.

The president of the United States represents both triumph and defeat. Political defeat is the one that really matters. There is nothing that can prevent it, not even intelligence, speech or magic. Image is a double-edged sword because its exaltation and its belittling are an artifice. The president’s management may be more in depth than the approval index given by the whim of opinion, which is generally untrustworthy.