Obama's Curse

As President Obama continues to struggle with his agenda in what has become an ungovernable America, several questions are being raised about his leadership. Many who voted for him and saw him as a saviour are disillusioned. Those who took him to be a fraud are singing "I told you so". He is seen as the preacher-in-chief rather than the commander-in-chief. I believe what is happening here is that he is the only adult in the room and when he talks to Americans as adults no one is able to comprehend him.

There are many reasons for the situation in which he finds himself. The number one reason, I think, is his inexperience. This is coming through loud and clear in the way he has been manipulated in the health care debate. It was perhaps a mistake that he took up the health care issue as his primary concern even above the issue of restoring jobs and the economy. He believed that he had learnt from the debacle of Bill and Hillary Clinton's attempts at reform in the 90s and decided a diametrically opposite approach. Egged on by the democrats in Congress, he fell for the reasoning that if he wanted health care reform to be passed, then he had only a one-year window of opportunity. He also passed on complete control to the Congress to come up with the bill's provisions and to cut deals to ensure its passage. I think this whole process smacked of his inexperience in understanding the Congress' model of working and how things get done in Washington. This issue took so much focus out of his remaining agenda that nothing else mattered for the people. A failure on this front (as it already is, even if it passes as a budget reconciliation next month) has dealt a body blow to his reputation.

My second reason for his failure, may make many readers cringe. I believe that he is ahead of his time. Being a pragmatist centrist (many readers may not like this characterisation of him), he has already sensed the coming multi-polar world order. I think he has understood the inevitable fact that in the not-too-distant future America will no longer be the supreme power in the world that it has been for the past few decades. He is steering the country in a direction where it can co-exist with other powers. A world where America will have to listen to lectures from China and other nations. That is a world alien to most Americans. Perhaps he will be blamed for letting it happen. Perhaps that may turn out to be his greatest legacy. As a pragmatist he would rather accept that inevitable fact and embrace change rather than challenge it. Most Americans cannot digest this or embrace it today. And therein lies his curse.

In my opinion, the world needs a leader country that is one among many equals. Many people shudder at the thought of having China as that leader. When you look around you realize that with all the warts, all the faults and all the failings that they had, US is perhas still the only country who can provide that leadership economically, militarily and politically. So, it is as well that we hope that Obama succeed rather than fail in his attempt to reshape the American agenda.