And so Obama has lost.
As expected, though less than predicted and, especially, much less than the Tea Party whack jobs had hoped, the electorate delivered a vote of sanction.
Moreover, he himself immediately recognized the fact -- with a simplicity, an elegance, and an attitude of fair play that inspire admiration.
That said, the campaign is over.
And there is a type of argument that, while the battle was raging, was perhaps part of the game (and even so... ) but that, now that it is over and it is time to get down to serious issues, one would like to stop hearing.
People must stop saying, for example, that Obama's economic policies "created unemployment," when all serious studies (beginning with that of the pro-Republicans Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder in late August) concluded that his policies created nearly three million new jobs and that, without them, the unemployment rate would now have reached between 11 and 16 percent.
They must stop saying that the global economy under Obama bordered on collapse and that it was his fault, when in all probability (as François David, French CEO of COFACE, wrote in Le Figaro on November 1st) it began to turn around, most certainly, when spurred on by the "emerging countries," but with the support as well -- why not admit it? -- of a US monetary policy that was the only possible one in a country whose consumers represent, by themselves alone, 18 percent of the world GDP.
At any rate, one cannot hold a president elected two years ago responsible for this dilapidation of America, for the this slow destruction of its infrastructure, this decline of its education system or in its productivity that Arianna Huffington brilliantly denounces in her book (Third World America, Crown), but that began, as she points out, when he, Obama, hadn't even entered politics yet.
One cannot blame him for going at once too fast and not fast enough.
For paying too much attention to consensus, compromising too much with his adversaries -- and having a taste for steamrolling.
One cannot lament his 49 percent of favorable public opinion in the polls when others, like Sarkozy, are at 29 percent.
Nor the "disenchantment" of his partisans when two great TV showmen, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, managed to attract 150,000 demonstrators, furiously favorable, to the Mall in the last hours of the campaign.
One cannot keep repeating in a loop that an earthquake is threatening Washington when what has happened to this president at mid-term has happened to so many before him: Without going all the way back to Eisenhower, Nixon, or Johnson, Obama is, today, in more or less the same situation as Reagan in 1982, Clinton in 1994, and Bush in 2006 -- and it's not the end of the world.
People must stop droning away, again, that Obama "hasn't kept his promises."
What promises, after all?
As for the health system that, before him, condemned 46 million indigents to an absence of care and, thus, a premature death, he began the greatest revolution the country has seen since the civil rights movement. It remains, of course, to follow it through, that is to say, to vote the requisite budget. But on this point, the ball is in the Republican camp and it is up to them to say if they will behave like saboteurs or responsible individuals.
In Iraq, Obama kept his word, for the retreat has already begun, and by the end of 2011 there will be no more US soldiers in Baghdad and Basra.
In the Middle East, he did the opposite of what his predecessors did, which consisted of waiting until the final months of the last year of their last mandate to become aware of the existence of the problem and to rush into a race with the clock whose goal was to snatch, like a trophy, a vague, slapdash accord they would never, of course, obtain. Barack Obama became aware of the urgency and the complexity of the affair on the first day of the first year of his first mandate -- and that, already, is not bad.
On the vaster front of what Samuel Huntington imprudently termed the "war of civilizations," he calmed things down, held out a hand to moderate Islam and, sometimes through a great speech (as in Cairo), sometimes through subtle signs (the affair of the mosque in New York), limited the risk of confrontation, bloc against bloc, from which democracies, and Democracy itself, would emerge the loser.
He has changed the face of America.
He has invented a tone, and a thrill, that are new.
Arm-wrestling with Wall Street, he avoided the trap of a populism that would, unfortunately, no more have spared the Democrats than it would have their adversaries.
He reacted calmly, without giving in to the temptation to overplay the role of Commander in Chief on the front lines of the "war on terror" when al Qaeda invited itself into the campaign in its last days by addressing two explosive packages to Jews in Chicago -- and that, too, is evidence of a manner of conducting politics of an entirely different style than that of his predecessor!
In a word, Barack Obama has sometimes "disappointed" (Guantanamo, Iran), but he has not "failed."
And only those who confuse politics and magic, regretting that he did not transform his country and the world in the wink of an eye, can speak of "failure."
For my part, I believe more than ever that his appearance, then his election, and his actions, were one of the best things to have happened in these times of darkness that are, everywhere and more and more often, our own.
And as regards this president, one who is weakened but who has retained both his majority in the Senate and his control over the country's foreign policy, I am willing to bet he is not done surprising us, including by getting brilliantly even, in two years, with those who, basically, have never been able to swallow seeing a black man living in the White House.
Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: The Jewish Mandate To Take Responsibility for Torture
Then — they just gave it to the Wall Street Banks! At near zero interest!
Wow, cool! How did they do that? Can I get one of those?
The stated reason for this rather impressive ‘gift’ was to encourage the gentlemen of Wall Street to pretty please with sugar on top provide a few small loans to a few small businesspeople so that maybe they can create a few jobs that a lot of people could sorely use . I am sure that Mr. Bernanke was very stern and wagged his finger at them. In spite of this, though, the gentlemen of Wall Street instead immediately began ‘speculating’ [i.e. gambling with other people’s money] on foreign currencies.
Wow. Nice work if you can get it, eh? These people are rad! This scam puts Midas to shame! Rumpelstiltskin was a piker compared to these guys! How long would it have taken him to weave $600 billion out of straw? And these guys don’t even need any straw!
Comment s'expliquer tant de malentendu et de malveillance sur sa stature politique?
Je tente d'y répondre à http://study.stanley-cavell.org/+Le-perfectionnisme-une-alternative+
Merci pour votre article.
What was important to many an Obama supporter was principals, belief, a philosophy we would describe as thinking outside the box.
Too many people inside the box have narrow minds, having come up through that end of the business. If the President is elected to "change" the way of government, then Obama should have brought in people with simple common sense. When the Prez bings in a lot of people from Goldman Sachs and other banking houses, who are beholden to the "status quo" not change, as well as their former companies financial well being/interest. When they are done in their government job, they'll be back at business as usual.
The appointment of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers was a failure to keep the promise of change.
Anyone watching them over the past 2 years can tell you, their advice and work has not been favorable to the "change philosopy", not mortgage forclosures, CDO's, derivatives, audit the Fed, consumer protection, TBTF, stimulas size, TARP, Fanny-Freddie (have I left anything out?).
The reason they have not been favorable is because THEY ARE NOT FOR CHANGE., they have fancy resumes showing their allegiance to the way the system runs.
For just one moment, in this 2 year administration, every Obama supporter felt "in sync" with the man that ran on "change", and that was when he withdrew his nomination of Tom Daschle for Sec. of HHS, and said rather humbly, "Sorry, I made a mistake".
Straw man. If there's a 49%, it's an outlier.
It is about the choices he HAS made, programs enacted, not those that haven't been.
And posters here can argue with me that he has accomplished much, and I won't deny that.
But only the most blindly faithful could fail to see that his agenda has supported Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Ignoring Jobs and healing the Banks first was the reason we lost so many seats.
We had a once in a lifetime opportunity to remake this economic system. We got health care, and that's fine. But we've lost control of our own destiny now, and not one Banker has been charged, though the FBI has been pointing out fraud since 2004. Holder has not brought one CEO to trial, and FDIC has not sent one of the major wall street banks into receivership as Black and Hudson and many others have said the law demands of the President.
I would rather have a job, be able to pay my bills, feed my family, keep my house, than all the health reform in the world. The real unemployment rate in America is above 17%.
Had Obama followed the law, spent 2+ Trillion on jobs creation rather than the bankers who caused this mess, we would have kept control of Congress for the next 20 years.
He might be wrong. We'll see.
So, keep telling yourself that the fact that Obama has disappointed so many of the folks who supported him prior is a good thing. You'll be well-rehearsed when it comes time to tell yourself it's a good thing those folks aren't voting for him in the next election.