Campaign Notes: Hopey-changey Stuff

By John Barron

In one year we will know whether Barack Obama has been given a second four-year term or whether the restless appetite for change that has dominated every US election since the 2006 mid-terms and blighted incumbents will ultimately consume him as well.

Three years ago, on a mild autumn night in Grant Park Chicago, President-elect Obama warned 150 000 supporters standing enraptured on the shore of Lake Michigan that there was a monumental task ahead:

“I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college.”

They chanted the familiar refrain “Yes We Can! Yes We Can!”

“There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.”

(Photo: gingerbydesign)

But after months of campaigning, the euphoria of the election, the inauguration and the first 100 days, the cheering died down, and those 150 000 people went back to their usual lives.

Yet for many, those lives soon changed — and not for the better.

In 2009 and 2010 more and more Americans lost their jobs and with them their homes and their health insurance. Others were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Others still saw their employment conditions eroded and wages cut, and their hopes for their children’s education go up in smoke.

On that night in Grant Park, under the weary gaze of Lincoln’s statue, 6.7 per cent of Americans were without work. Three years later it’s 9.0 per cent.

Today 35 000 of those people in Grant Park are living in a home that’s “under water” — the mortgage is worth more than the house itself.

We’ll know next November how deep the disappointment in Obama is. Will those millions of first time voters, the college kids, the African-Americans and other minorities turn out to vote, or will they stay home just as they did in 2010?

The very same history that echoed around the streets of Chicago that night tells us now that no modern President has been given a second term in an economy like this.

Still, Barack Obama has made history before.

8 November 2011