Barack Obama’s presidency, three years on – Do We Have Any More False Hope Left After He Promised So Much?

It was the summer of 2008 and I was sitting on a train stuck somewhere between London and Newcastle in England. We’d been sitting for a while. Conversations began to light up. People from all over the world discovered I was from the United States. They all expressed universal contempt for George W. Bush, and thought of Barack Obama as some sort of savior. I tried to tell them Obama was linked to Wall Street, but they refused to believe me. Hope and change was all they cared about. Has Obama lived up to the expectations that he created?

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The Illusion of Hope

Every economic downturn has its brief moments of glory; those times on the downsize when new government economic data is released that shows something positive. And each kernel of good news in the midst of unmitigated disaster is treated by the government and the news media as a golden nugget of opportunity to support the conservative and liberal economic conviction that the calamity is caused by mass depression among the populace. And so members of the Obama administration and their sychophants in the news media have touted a few nuggets of gold amidst a mile high heap of economic cow dung and are now telling us good times are right around the corner. They’re figuring the absolute cure for the recession is a golden nugget of bullshit.

It may take a couple of years, but as the next election cycle approaches, Herr Obama, the master of the silver tongue of hope, will come to the conclusion that his cure for mass distemper will not have relieved the unemployed of their desperation for life’s little pleasure (like jobs); his cure will likely have resulted in rising unemployment and a tendency among the underlying population to blame the president for the economic madness that has scuttled their hopes and dreams. It’s possible the economy will come out of this funk, but if it does, the unemployment rate will remain stubbornly high. So whatever the outcome he faces two years from now , Obama will have no choice but to decide to change course in order to become re-electable.

He’ll need to figure out that being the next Herbert Hoover isn’t helping, that his remedy of hope for hopelessness is stupid, so he’ll mosey over to the political left, just a little, but not enough to help with his re-election campaign. At some point, he’ll need to become the next Roosevelt, but the odds are when he decides to become a great president, rather than hover just above George W. Bush on the all time lists, he’ll be too little and too late.

That’s when he’ll discover that conveying to the mass of citizens a nugget of hope is not a cure for a recession.

Read Full Post »

Barack Obama and the Illusion of Hope

Every economic downturn has its brief moments of glory; those times on the downsize when new government economic data is released that shows something positive. And each kernal of good news in the midst of unmitigated disaster is treated by the government and the news media as a golden nugget of opportunity to support the conservative and liberal economic conviction that the calamity is caused by mass depression among the populace. And so members of the Obama administration and their sychophants in the news media have touted a few nuggets of gold amidst a mile high heap of economic cow dung and are now telling us good times are right around the corner. They’re figuring the absolute cure for the recession is a golden nugget of bullshit.

It may take a couple of years, but as the next election cycle approaches, Herr Obama, the master of the silver tongue of hope, will come to the conclusion that his cure for mass distemper will have relieved the unemployed of their desperation for life’s little pleasure (like jobs); but his cure will likely have resulted in rising unemployment and a tendency among the underlying population to blame the president for the economic madness that has scuttled their hopes and dreams. It’s possible the economy will come out of this funk, but if it does, the unemployment rate will remain stubbornly high. So whatever the outcome he faces two years from now , Obama will have no choice but to decide to change course in order to become reelectable.

He’ll need to figure out that being the next Herbert Hoover isn’t helping, that his remedy of hope for hopelessness is stupid, so he’ll mosey over to the political left, just a little, but not enough to help with his re-election campaign. At some point, he’ll need to become the next Roosevelt, but the odds are when he decides to become a great president, rather than hover just above George W. Bush on the all time lists, he’ll be too little and too late.

That’s when he’ll discover that conveying to the mass of citizens a nugget of hope is not a cure for a recession.

Read Full Post »