Barack Obama: the president who fell to earth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/barack-obama-president-elections-editorial

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Barack Obama has a foe more potent than Mitt Romney. It is the younger version of himself. Scaremongering about a Republican candidate who will send America back to the age of black and white television will not be enough. Whining about the economic hand he was dealt will not do it either. George W Bush is history. His legacy – two wars and an global economic crash – may indeed have been so toxic that it would have taken all four of his successor's years to overcome, no matter who he was, but as we have charted in these columns, that is not the whole truth either. In important areas – Afghanistan and the drone war against al-Qaida to name but two – Obama continued all too consciously in Bush's footsteps.

No, Bush is not Obama's problem. His own words and promises are, though. To get re-elected, Obama the president will have to prove how he can still keep faith with Obama the presidential candidate. He will have to make the account of the last four years more than just a blame game.

The older and wiser man has several advantages over his younger self. He passed a tepid version of healthcare reform, but a reform nonetheless; he pulled out of Iraq; he prevented another great depression; he saved the car industry in Detroit. These are no mean achievements. But how much paler is the reality of power than the promise of it. As candidate, his rhetorical ambition knew no bounds, promising not just to change politics but energise a new generation. These people are now profoundly de-energised. If they are motivated, the urge is negative. They see, all too clearly, whom they are going to vote against – a rich man who will undo all the modest social democratic gains of the last four years, who as commander in chief will be drawn into a war with Iran. But they cannot as yet see whom they will be voting for.

The candidate in 2008 was a brilliant electoral device. He was all things to all men – and women. Liberals saw in him a genuine radical. Centrists thought he could break the power of the Washington lobby. Climate change campaigners thought America would lead the search for Kyoto's successor, not block it. Everyone prayed Obama would restore America's tarnished global image, so that it could lead by force of argument rather than force of arms. Of course, this Icarus flew so high he was doomed to crash. But remember, too, the scale of his ambition. He set the bar for his leadership no lower than Abraham Lincoln himself.

It has been such a bitter, personalised campaign that no candidate has even thought of making a major policy speech. It has all been attack ads, and there is much more to come. This week Obama will have to do better. He must provide people with a real reason, other than fear, to vote him in again.