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Etats-Unis : les élections qui enterrent le "Yes We Can" | Rue89
United States: the elections bury the 'Yes We Can "
By Nicholas Dungan
Many commentators have portrayed the elections to be held on Tuesday in the U.S. elections-called "mid-term" or "midterms" because they occur in the middle of four years of the presidential office, as a referendum on Barack Obama. The reality is more subtle.
The midterms are more of a referendum on hope for change raised by Barack Obama in 2008 on "Hope" and "Yes We Can".
The limits of charisma
Barack Obama arrives at the presidency in January 2009 with no experience of power and networks without Washington: he is forced to fall back on his vision and charisma.
The vision is bold and clear: the country is facing not only the most serious economic and financial crisis in nearly a century, but also to a real decline due to systematic under-investment in education, energy, infrastructure and especially in rallying political ideas. Obama therefore seeks to address the merits of restructuring at the same time as the economic crisis.
To sell his vision, Obama must rely on his charisma, once the stimulus package passed, it tries to push through structural reforms. But the United States, the Constitution grants Congress the development of domestic politics, and parliamentarians, who often spend decades in Washington while the president is limited to two terms, see him coming from afar.
The health reform lagging dangerously before being passed to the satisfaction of pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. Financial reform will be the minimum to respond to public discontent and circumscribe a Wall Street actually quite little punished.
Obama quickly found the limits of his vision and charisma. Therefore ends the hope of "Change We Can Believe In." How such a reversal is it possible in just two short years?
Drape external environment
The modern history of the United States beginning September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington have brought lasting damage to the confidence of Americans. Since then and especially since the 2008 financial crisis, TV news, radio programs, newspaper headlines such as popular USA Today carried a succession of bad news - which do not improve with "European" level of unemployment and growth.
Placed in this context, Barack Obama does not represent a genuinely new phenomenon, but another attempt, after that of George W. Bush, in response to the injury suffered by the soul of America. Bush cleverly priviledged the "Wild West" if Obama is accused of being Muslim or a foreign anti-American, is that in a country where "the idea of America" has an almost religious value, the called into question soon becomes heresy and reform flirts with sacrilege.
But the movement of the "Tea Party" has nothing new either: the white working class, disgusted by the elites disdain towards them, are the direct heirs of the peasants who made the "Whiskey Rebellion" in Pennsylvania in the 1790s.
What impact did Obama?
Barack Obama has had an impact on American society, and which one? Its impact, in spite of himself, was primarily to radicalize the public discourse, to polarize Americans and contribute to the impression that whatever one tries, the political system in the United States is irreparably broken.
After the midterms this Tuesday, the country will largely ungovernable until the presidential elections of 2012, Obama will be a "lame duck" ["lame duck", which refers to presidents without power, ed] for the second half of its mandate and strongly tempted to give up to appear in 2012 (the U.S. Constitution because it would then be run again later).
Far from bringing a wind of change, Obama has confirmed the desire of many Americans to return as soon as possible to business as usual. The results of the vote tomorrow is a technical victory for this party or that faction, he promises a loss of hope of change carried by Barack Obama in 2008 and evidence that America, she does not want to change and do unchanged: the opposite of "Hope" and "Yes We Can".
MidTerms Elections: The murder of Hope and the burial of "Yes we can"...
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