The spring in Barack Obama’s step in the autumn of his presidency is surprising for most people — welcome for some, disconcerting for others. After all, the US Presi-dent was expected to be a lame — if not a dead — duck by now. The level of Congressional opposition he faces has steadily been rising, arguably reaching levels that no previous President in living memory has had to contend with. When was the last time, for instance, that the Congress invited a foreign head of state to rubbish a key American initiative, and then lavished him with a series of standing ovations?
The cynosure of almost all Republican eyes was, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu. A substantial proportion of Republican deputies also sought to stall the nuclear deal with Iran by informing Tehran that it either wouldn’t be ratified in the first place, or it would be reversed in due course. To their credit, Mr Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, went ahead nonetheless.
It’s interesting to recall that, just 11 years ago, when he was aiming for no more than the Illinois senatorial slot, Mr Oba-ma made his first national splash while endorsing Mr Kerry’s presidential candidacy at the 2004 Democratic convention. He spoke eloquently of a more perfect union that would transcend differences between black and white, red and blue.
When, just four years later, he overcame the formidable hurdles in the path of his own presidential candidacy, the advent of Mr Obama prompted illusions of a post-racial America. It was a lovely idea, but disconnected from American reality. The election of the first black US President was a momentous occasion, and for some of us the moment is encapsulated in the tears rolling down the cheeks of the Jesse Jackson as he stood watching Mr Obama deliver his victory speech in November 2008. Many were moist-eyed on that day.
There was also the fear among African-Ameri-cans — at least some of whom who opposed Mr Obama’s candidacy on this very basis — that a black President would be an easy target for whites who believe they ought to be in a position to claim exclusive ownership of America. It is hence not particularly surprising that Mr Obama has endured the unforgiving wrath of a substantial segment of white America. The extent to which he continued to pursue George W. Bush’s “war on terror” was never going to be enough for them. And domestic initiatives such as expanding healthcare insurance reinforced absurd impressions of him as some kind of radical determined to rob Americans of free choice in the lottery of life.
The SC’s endorsement of gay marriage is seen as another triumph for Obama-oriented liberals, even though the Presi-dent himself did not come out as an unequivocal supporter until the start of his second term. On the international front, beyond the successful negotiations with Iran, diplomatic ties have been re-established with Cuba after more than 50 years. When Mr Obama was elected President in 2008, there were two broad strands of opinion on the left. One was that his presidency would make no difference whatsoever to America’s neoconservative trajectory. The other was that it could prove positively transformational.
Seven years on, the report card is mixed. The American economy may be recovering from the blow struck by the global financial crisis, but massive disparities of wealth remain. And, not withstanding his restricted room for manoeuvre on the race relations front, it’s simply not good enough to say, as he recently did in a BBC interview, that the lack of movement on gun laws is a lasting regret. He should have been considerably bolder on that front.
Mr Obama also draws considerable flak in his capacity as the “drone President”, with “kill lists” ostensibly geared towards eliminating militants. The immorality of the campaign has been challenged, but its efficacy is dubious at best. Although Mr Obama’s reluctance to intervene in Syria has been described as weakness, posterity may judge it differently.
It is unlikely that the President’s legacy as a whole will be held up as an exemplar. But even in passing interim judgment — his term, after all, has another 18 months to run — it would only be fair to acknowledge that it could have been a whole lot worse.
By arrangement with Dawn
