First Obama. Most American Presidents are a bit of a compromise, a tendency one way or the other, an unexpectedly strong candidate from a weak party (Clinton’s second term) or an unexpectedly weak candidate from a strong party (both Bushes). But Obama was something else, a firework. I was wrong, in that I thought he would burn out during the primaries, but he kept on and on.
So in this sense I am not surprised at what is happening to him, only at the scale and swiftness of the voters’ response. Some people seemed to be predicting an even worse disaster – losing both the House and the Senate – but that seems to have been expectations management. As it is, Republicans will begin to take over the House committees and it will be harder to get things done. Few would have guessed that Obama would arrive at the next election looking a bit irrelevant, but that is now a possibility. He needs a Bay of Pigs moment.
Of course expectations management is what went wrong for Obama: people expected too much. The crisis was not his fault, indeed the seeds were sown by Clinton, who cancelled the enforced separation of investment and commercial banking (the Glass Steagall Act) and made the mortgage companies underwrite home loans to people who couldn’t pay them back.
But now the Americans have turned against Obama because they resent the difficult times they are gong through on his watch: they expected too much of him and now they are disappointed.
This isn’t an unmitigated disaster for Obama, that would only be if the Republicans started to unpick his healthcare reforms; but it is strong political lesson on how fragile a thing a reputation can be.
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