The next 10 weeks will be the best of Barack Obama’s life. He has been elected to the highest office of the greatest nation by 62 million Americans otherwise known as “The People You Can Fool All of the Time.”
From now through Inauguration Day, they will continue to swoon over him and his promises of “change.” But on Obama’s first day in the Oval Office, he will begin to disappoint.
His acceptance speech on election night was essentially a disclaimer of all the assurances he made for the past two years. Referring to the agenda he had espoused, Obama told his followers, “We may not get there in one year, or even one term.” In the course of a day, “change we can believe in” became change we better not count on.
Of course, Obama is only being realistic. This country has a deficit of $455 billion, and total debt tops $10 trillion. Digging a deeper hole by enacting Obama’s spending proposals would be foolish, perhaps catastrophic.
Undoubtedly, that explains why he tried to tamp down expectations even further on Friday by saying, “None of this [agenda] can be accomplished if we continue to see a potential meltdown in the banking system or the financial system.”
But that is not going to sit well with Obama devotees like Peggy Joseph, the woman who explained to a television reporter that she was jubilant because Obama’s election meant, “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car! I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage!”
After Obama is sworn in, she and her cohort expect to be awash in redistributed money. It that doesn’t happen, they are going to be more bitter than those folks who cling to guns and religions.
Obama will disillusion still more supporters if he breaks his promise to give a tax cut to the middle class while raising taxes on those earning $250,000 a year, as he’s already signaled he will do.
Last week Obama backpedaled, “I think that the plan that we’ve put forward is the right one, but obviously over the next several weeks and months, we’re going to be continuing to take a look at the data and see what’s taking place in the economy as a whole.”
Joe Biden was right that if Americans were foolish enough to elect an untested leader, the rest of the world would test him for us. Within hours of Obama’s election, Russia announced that it will deploy short-range missiles near Poland.
Apparently recognizing Obama as someone whose willingness to appease makes Neville Chamberlain look hard-nosed, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cabled his congratulations, as did Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Our enemies are giddy; our allies are nervous. That does not bode well for calm.
Yet presumably, many of those who voted for Obama did so because they have faith in his implicit promise to bring about world peace and galactic harmony by sitting down with rogues and dictators and showing them the error of their ways. When that proves impossible (Obama is unable to eradicate evil: Stop the presses!), he will lose another segment of support.
Anti-war voters were among Obama’s earliest supporters after he called last year for immediate withdrawal of the troops in Iraq. Although he backed away from that position before the election, Obama still promised to begin drawing down forces.
As commander-in-chief, he may well be persuaded not to abandon Iraq prematurely, a reversal that would cause a large faction of his followers to abandon their support for him.
Infatuation fizzles; excitement fades. Sometimes even the most benighted see the light. Six months from now – when the country’s economic woes are still bad and perhaps getting worse; when Obama has angered some of our allies and emboldened our enemies; when the covetous aren’t seeing their wallets overflowing with their neighbor’s money; when the war in Iraq grinds on – how many of Obama’s 62 million fans still will be as enamored of him?
It may occur to them that he said what they wanted to hear, that he did whatever it took to get elected. And that that represents anything but change. It’s just politics as usual.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough is an award-winning commentary writer whose work has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers, magazines, and books.
