President's problem is that he is being gauged against the hype that marked his election, writes NOEL WHELAN
THIS TIME last year some commentators, both in the United States and internationally, were so glowing in their views of the nascent Obama presidency that one got the sense they were already mentally chiselling his visage on Mount Rushmore. Many breathlessly predicted that Obama was set to lead one of the great American presidencies earning him a place in the granite and the history books alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt.
The mood around Obama is now, thankfully, more restrained and realistic. The defeat suffered by the Democrats in the Senate byelection in Massachusetts has become a tipping point for a wave of commentary reassessing Obama’s prospects. In the last 10 days the former presidency most often cited in the same sentence as Obama for comparison purposes is that of the last one-term Democratic president, Jimmy Carter.
It is hard to overstate the scale of electoral setback suffered by the Democrats in Massachusetts on January 19th. The loss of this Senate seat once held by John F Kennedy and for almost 47 years by Ted Kennedy would have of itself been remarkable. It is all the more startling that only 13 months after Obama swept to power, the Democratic candidate in this most liberal of states lost out so badly to a relatively conservative newcomer. Obama himself polled 62 per cent in Massachusetts in November 2008. Martha Coakley lost to the Republican candidate Scott Brown 52 per cent to 47 per cent, with an Independent named Joe Kennedy getting the remaining 1 per cent.
Democratic commentators and other Obama fans have sought to emphasise the local factors responsible for this dramatic electoral setback. The Democratic candidate, state attorney general Coakley, ran a lacklustre campaign.
Even if local candidate and campaign failures are the true explanations for Coakley’s defeat, that would be an indictment not only of the Democrats nationally but also of the Obama team. We were told that Obama and his strategists, with their skills in speech-writing, social networking, e-mail and internet fundraising and campaigning, had transformed Democratic electioneering forever. It was presumptuous of them to leave the Massachusetts Democrats to their own devices in what was always going to impact on the momentum of the Obama presidency, coinciding as it did with his first anniversary in office.
The more accurate assessments of what happened in Massachusetts have come from those who accept the byelection defeat was more about Obama than Coakley. It became a localised referendum on the Obama presidency to date and in particular on his proposals for healthcare reform. Polling shows that, not just in Massachusetts but also across the country, most voters do not believe the president has accomplished a lot in his first year.
When benchmarked against the performance of other presidents and premiers in their first year of office, Obama measures up well. Government is always difficult at a time of economic crisis. America currently has 18 million people unemployed. In addition, Obama leads the US at time when it is involved in two foreign wars.
Despite that, Obama has managed to stave off an economic depression by passing the stimulus package and his treasury team has stabilised the US banking system, at least for now.
Obama has also implemented a surge in Afghanistan and a planned withdrawal from Iraq. In another time or indeed in another country he would also get plaudits for having the courage to tackle healthcare reform in his first year. All in all, he deserves a relatively high mark for his initial performance as president.
The problem for Obama is that he is now being measured against the hype that marked his election. His achievements in the first year are being judged against the exaggerated expectations which grew around him in the last weeks of his campaign and the first weeks of his presidency.
Obama acquiesced in an overblown view of what his election meant. His victory was historic since he was the first African-American elected to the White House, but apart from that it was no more than any other change in administration from Republican to Democrat.
If anything, the fact that the new Democratic president was relatively new to the national political stage and owed much of his victory to the unpopularity of his predecessor should have tempered expectations for Obama’s first year.
Instead, his background and oratorical skill were allowed to generate an overblown impression of what he could achieve. Obama used his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to emphasise that he inherited an economic mess and was doing his best to solve it. It was well-structured and well-delivered, with an obvious emphasis on the need to boost job creation. The speech, however, contained no dramatic shift in approach.
The electoral setback Obama suffered in Massachusetts has forced him to realise the scale of the political task he has in next November’s mid-term congressional elections and indeed to secure his own re-election. It has also forced a rethink on some of the simplistic assumptions about US politics that gained easy currency after Obama’s win. America is still deeply divided politically, the Republican Party is still alive, Obama is a mere mortal, and change is easier said than done.