<b>Shreekant Sambrani:</b> The tragedy of Barack Obama

The US polity and Obama's persona are key to understanding why he failed to deliver to his potential

It is bad enough that your successor to the mightiest office in the world is your very antithesis in every respect — intellect, probity, grace, civility, even appearance. That your putting your enormous prestige on the line could not prevent it is worse. And the worst of all is that even before you have left office, formal steps are launched to dismantle what you considered your prime legacy. Those would be Barack Obama’s thoughts in the last days of his presidency of the United States if he were a brooding man, which he is not, but should have been. That would have enabled him to leave a more than transient mark on history.

“It’s been a long time coming, [but] change has come to America,” Obama said in his 2008 victory speech full of amazing grace. Change did come to America during Obama’s tenure, but most of it not for the better, as the world had hoped for on that November night eight years ago, in a once-in-a-lifetime moment of an idealistic outsider prevailing by challenging all precedents and myths.  How could this orator nonpareil, without a doubt the most intelligent, upright, and decent one to occupy the Oval Office in living memory, fail to do justice to his patent transformative potential? The answer lies as much in the American polity as in his own persona.

Obama had a short honeymoon (it appears that Donald Trump’s honeymoon may be over before it even begins, but that is small comfort), especially with the United States Congress. But even before he lost control of the House of Representatives in 2010, his legitimacy as president was challenged, and in a most vituperative manner. No president has ever had to face this. The Congressional antipathy could have been partly caused by the increasing ideological divide between the diminishing numbers of liberals and the increasingly shrill conservative voices that now dominate American politics of either party. Consequently, Obama’s record in his first term fell short of the miracle the world expected of the newest of its very short list of heroes at one of its most testing times.  Unfortunately, the second term was no improvement either.

But the elephant in the room leading to stiff resistance to Obama as a person and as the leader of the nation is something he alluded to in his farewell speech. His election did not quite usher in a post-racial nation. He had the growing urban tensions in mind, but he could have just as well been referring to his own race. Over half a century of desegregation and zealous implementation of comprehensive civil rights may have prepared the grounds for the election of a non-white president. But that person of extraordinary talent and abilities was still an outsider, the dreaded ‘other’ to a significant number of Americans, including the wielders of its levers of real power.

That still did not necessarily imply that the unprecedented Congressional deadlocks over budgets and inordinate delay in enacting the Affordable Care (Obamacare) Act Obama had to face were insurmountable. Lyndon Johnson had, after all, succeeded in getting civil rights legislation passed in even more hostile circumstances five decades earlier. Obama was not savvy to Congressional wheeling and dealing (of which Johnson was past master) and he had only his Vice-president Joe Biden, a maverick former Senator from a politically insignificant Delaware, running point for him. With his fervent appeal for bipartisanship summarily rejected, Obama appeared in no mood to compromise. For over half his term, he seemed withdrawn, aloof and unable to carry his concerns where it mattered most, at Capitol Hill. As Othello was in Venice but not of Venice, so was Obama in Washington but not of DC.

Barack Obama’s tenure rekindled hope in stressful times, not just in the US but all over the thinking world. He was not audacious as he had intended it to be, but warm enough anyway. Photo: Reuters
 

 

For all the economic change he brought about — record job creations, respectable growth — Obama could not read the mounting disaffection of the white middle class, who felt they had been marginalised and others — read minorities, immigrants, women — had gained at their expense. Or he was not sufficiently alert to see its implications for the successor he championed, the shop-soiled Hillary Clinton was perceived as being cosy with the establishment.

Obama the peace candidate and Nobel laureate, Obama the cerebral was also unable to transform himself into Obama the practitioner of realpolitik in the global arena. His dilemma was that he could think of 17 different alternatives to deal with a situation, none wholly satisfactory, and thus unable to choose. Having committed to bring the US troops home during his first campaign in 2008, he was a reluctant combatant in the killing fields of West Asia.  Vladimir Putin’s adventurism, Bashar al-Assad’s destructive stranglehold on Syria, the self-serving mendacity of the sundry Afghan warlords and above all, the unspeakably brutal ravaging caused by the Islamic State would have tested the mettle of even an avowed warrior like Winston Churchill.  Obama was simply not bold enough to act decisively, to the frequent dismay of his allies, especially in Europe. They would have much preferred American boots on the ground, something that went against the president’s grain.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves,” remarked the Bard’s Cassius to his friend, hoping to persuade him to stop Julius Caesar from becoming Emperor of Rome. In Obama’s case, it appears the fault was both in his stars and in himself, making his tragedy a combination of the Greek and the Shakespearean. And Americans who elected an Anti-Obama also gave the outgoing president a near-record 60 per cent approval is a paradox only the stars could contrive!

But even a short assessment of this most exceptional politician of our times will be incomplete without acknowledging his greatest contribution: a rekindling of hope in these stressful times, not just in America but all over the thinking world, not necessarily audacious as he had intended it to be, but warm enough anyway. Fare-thee-well, Barack Hussein Obama!

The writer is an economist who comments on current developments