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Thu 01 Jan 2010Barack Obama's first year
A YEAR into his term, notwithstanding the utopian hopes of his admirers that he could in Tom Paine’s words “begin the world again”, it must be conceded that Barack Obama does not walk on water. As anniversaries go, it could not have been much worse.
In Massachusetts, which he took in the presidential election with a 26-point majority, a humiliating Senate byelection defeat on Tuesday night put in doubt his flagship healthcare reform package. It was all the more galling for being the seat held for more than four decades by that package’s greatest proponent, the late Ted Kennedy who called it “the cause of my life”.
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