Obama, Are You Still There?
We have been waiting. To be reconnected.
Last week, the Massachusetts voters handed Edward Kennedy’s former Senate seat to the Republicans. Obama’s aides insisted his historic health reform drive was not dead.
Obama admitted – he had lost some ’sense of talking directly to the American people’. He conceded the communication with the people was broken.
A year ago, the world celebrated a black president in the white house. Many of us never thought we would see the day. Obama was not just black. He was the single man who could.
What he could do was he could connect. He could speak to the people. To the most challenging demographic groups. Those advertisers and ageing politicians see as the elusive ‘target groups’.
He was inexperienced and young, but he showed a sure footed presence that was not all about good politics. He was accorded near rock star status. No other President Elect captured the imagination of the world like Obama. He struck a chord, with just the right discord.
So what happened?
There was a disconnect. What he did or didn’t do, what he did right or didn’t do right in his first year as President will be debated for a while. The disconnect is between the President Elect and the President. One was an inspiration. The other, another President.
We thought this black man was going to get around the system. Because he beat the system campaigning. It was not just the viral campaigns. It was a demeanour that broke through and spoke directly to the people. An earnest voice that encouraged idealism and raised hope.
There was a sense that this might be the man who would try to do the right thing. No matter what. And he had the smarts to do it.
What and how did the white house filter his voice so that he became just another President? To a point he had to admit he had lost his touch to connect with the people, the very element that got him voted into the white house.
So the white house was a different ball game. America continued to be a centre-right country ideologically. Yes, but unless his campaign was not grounded on realities, he should not be totally consumed by the harsh realities of the system governing a President to govern.
With the inauguration, more speeches, one or two missteps, the world started to notice perhaps the first black President was not the new black. He was able to finesse the hanging questions with rhetoric. But for the upcoming State of the Union speech, rhetoric won’t suffice anymore. So what next? Take the populist centre, move from healthcare, climate change to rising deficit and joblessness?
We didn’t buy into the hype. We were not expecting miracles in what was one of the most traumatic years. We knew his first year would be punishing. The massive economic stimulus helped, total economic collapse was avoided, the recovery was faster than expected and the international image of America improved.
The double-digit unemployment, not meeting the deadline to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, committing another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan against the controversy of his Nobel Peace Prize. The list goes on.
His approval rating is at a historic low. The promise and the delivery of promise seem separate. If Obama was half as different a President as he was as the President Elect, he would have made a world of a difference. It would be less about good or bad politics and more about the sense of someone really trying to make a difference. Before being President, he had a voice which spoke to both the cynic and the idealist in all of us. But it was also a voice which spoke of transformational change. It was also a voice of hope.
Can we still have the audacity to hope?
