Sarah Palin, America’s most high-profile conservative, attracted some opprobrium earlier this year when she posed the following rhetorical question to Barack Obama’s supporters: “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” In addition to the sarcasm, opposing hope is rarely an advisable path to American hearts. Such traits may explain why Ms Palin got a 22 per cent approval rating in a recent CBS poll. Yet, the more Mr Obama soldiers on, the clearer it is that Ms Palin’s scorn contained an authentic sting.
Having been elected partly on the basis of hope, Mr Obama may have to put the accent on fear in 2012 if he wants to be re-elected – fear, that is, of what the other guy might do. As Bill Galston, the respected US political observer, points out: “Hope is a souffle that never rises twice.”
Anyone sceptical of this should recall the degree of hope Mr Obama offered his swelling army of supporters during his 2008 campaign. It makes for awkward reading. Here is what Mr Obama said in Minnesota on 3 June, 2008, when he finally vanquished Hillary Clinton – the day the Democratic party’s better angels trumped the devil it knew.
“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless,” said Mr Obama. “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”
Perhaps Mr Obama can redeem some of that promise in the second half of his first term, particularly, if he is fortunate, on jobs. But Friday’s payroll numbers suggest the pessimists remain in the ascendant on that front: the private sector created just 64,000 jobs in September – way below the 200,000 it needs simply to keep pace with population growth and alarmingly under the 300,000, to 400,000 required to bring the jobless rate down.
Likewise, should Mr Obama get a second term, the core benefits of his recent healthcare reform would start to come online. The oceans, however, will have to wait.
Even with solid Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, Mr Obama has been unable to push through anything resembling a national plan to curb carbon emissions. And while Mr Obama has ended combat operations in Iraq, as he pledged to do, few are celebrating since almost all of the departing troops have been diverted to Afghanistan.
Nor, to state the obvious, has Mr Obama managed to bring red state (Republican) and blue state (Democratic) America together. Indeed, barring gross methodological errors by the world’s best polling firms, almost half of red state America seems to think Mr Obama prays east towards Mecca every day. Others imagine him genuflecting to Lenin or even Hitler. A more esoteric faction, led by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, believes Mr Obama’s long-deceased Kenyan father is venting his postcolonial rage through his son.
Mr Obama may largely be blameless in failing to fulfil some of these hopes after he was elected – particularly the bit about uniting with Republicans. But the promises he made to help get him there are his alone. Hope, therefore, will not do the trick a second time. Nor, unless there is a much stronger rebound than most forecasters expect, can he bank on a strong economy carrying him over the threshold in 2012.
Which leaves fear. Franklin Roosevelt famously said “the only thing to fear is fear itself”. Fear usually gets a bad press. But FDR may have undersold its electoral benefits. Fear of terrorism and surrender, for example, worked pretty well to assist George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.
And as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the outgoing Republican governor of California, hinted this week, Mr Obama could plausibly run on fear in 2012 if the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next month. “Obama can watch this casually [the likely Democratic congressional defeat], knowing that afterwards he will be in a much better position,” Mr Schwarzenegger told Der Spiegel. “I assume that Obama will get a second term in office.”
The Governator may well be right about the benefits of a Republican victory on 2 November. But Mr Obama cannot assume, as some Democrats do, that Republicans would head for the nearest cliff, which is where Mr Gingrich took them after Bill Clinton’s midterm defeat in 1994. In spite of the likely success next month of a large batch of Tea Party candidates, the lessons from Mr Gingrich’s over-reach are still fresh.
Mr Obama will have several things going for him too. History suggests Americans start to divide blame (and credit) more evenly after the opposition takes over the legislature. That would give Mr Obama even odds in 2012. Should he emulate Mr Clinton’s skill at painting his opponents as the wreckers, his chances would improve further. But that is a big assumption.
In contrast, it is a near certainty that whoever wins the 2012 Republican nomination will play and replay those soaring clips from Mr Obama’s 2008 campaign. He or she will probably follow up with something along the lines of what Ronald Reagan asked voters in 1980 when he challenged Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Whether or not his opponent offered a plausible alternative (a Reagan rather than a Palin), Mr Obama would need to be ready with a strong response in which words such as “hope” and “planet” occurred much more sparingly than before.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
