WASHINGTON: Barack Obama promised hope amid a “winter of American hardship” when he took office, but one year on, multiple crises endure, and his ambitious presidency is handcuffed by a ruined economy.Massive expectations greeted Obama’s epochal inauguration as America’s first black president on Jan 20, 2009, but it did not take long for optimism to fade as change proved hard to effect in such challenging times.
Obama has had major successes: he seems likely to pass health care reform where generations of presidents failed, he embraced multilateral diplomacy and won a Nobel prize and is on course to get combat troops out of Iraq this year.
But often, Obama’s most important achievements lay in what did not happen, there was no second Great Depression and the banking industry did not collapse — significant achievements but difficult to spin as political victories.
Early on, memories of his unpopular predecessor George W Bush were fresh, and Obama escaped blame for economic turmoil: but now the buck stops with him.
Polls show Obama’s public approval ratings tipping below 50 per cent, a watershed which complicates moving the president’s agenda.
Multiple surveys have public satisfaction at Obama’s economic management, amid 10 per cent unemployment, at only around 40 per cent — a rotten political hand ahead of mid-term congressional elections in November.
The White House, with Democratic control of Congress in peril, argues times might be tough, but relief is ahead.
Republicans counter though that Obama’s policies are wrong and he is a “job-killing president.” “I am absolutely confident we’re going to be able to look back at the end of this year and say that things are getting better; that we’ve reignited confidence in our economy, in America,” Obama said Thursday.
His top political strategist David Axelrod admitted that the economy was clouding the administration’s promise.
“You don’t have to be a political genius to know that in that environment it’s very hard to maintain very high poll numbers,” Axelrod said.
“And so, we’re the governing party.
We didn’t create the mess that we’re in, but we’re the responsible party now, and so that brings some heat down on us.” No one thought Obama’s stratospheric early polls numbers would endure, but his descent has been swift.
“He had nowhere to go but down,” said Tom Baldino, a professor of politics at Wilkes University, Pennsylvania.
“He inherited an unbelievable amount of problems, some of which he could not solve in six months or a year.” Dante Scala, who teaches politics and the presidency at the University of New Hampshire added: “coming down to earth was inevitable given the bad economy.” Logic suggests that Obama’s political position will only recover along with jobs and prosperity.
“There has to be a turn there. The mid-term elections coming up will not be good for the president (but) he can salvage some of that if the economy turns,” Baldino said.
Few sweeping remedies are available to fight unemployment, the budget deficit is above a trillion dollars and there is no appetite for a repeat of Obama’s 787 billion dollar stimulus bill.
So, small job creation programs aside, Obama can do little more than tell voters he understands their plight.
“This is a tough time for this country… pain and anxiety and sometimes anger felt by our friends and our constituents and our fellow Americans,” Obama said Thursday.
Obama faces a similar challenge to Ronald Reagan, who saw tough economic times take his approval rating to below 40 percent by mid 1982.But Reagan’s popularity rebounded along with the economy and he won reelection by a landslide in 1984.
“If the economy improves and we do not get stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistan, public sentiment is likely to catch up with the former and lead to his reelection in 2012,” said Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution.
Axelrod agreed: “I think if the economy improves, as I believe it will over the course of a year, that’s going to redound to our benefit.” Obama’s fate does not hinge on the economy alone.
A thicket of domestic and foreign policy challenges remain — with revived fears of Al-Qaeda airborne terror and Haiti’s earthquake disaster added to a crowded plate. — AFP