Matthew Norman: Obama ... an enigma instead of a leader
[Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2008, the political commentator Matthew Norman also writes The Independent’s media diary.]
In a race on which a small fortune rests, fellow compulsive gamblers will confirm, there is often a moment of doubt when your horse comes under pressure and for an agonising while, it's unclear whether what looked a magnificent beast in the paddock is the thoroughbred you took it to be or yet another arthritic mule.
With Barack Obama, that moment has arrived. Those of us who bet the mortgage a couple of years ago must face the fear that, like so many hugely promising colts, he hasn't trained on. Try as we might, the question cannot be suppressed. Have we backed another schtummer after all?
The current consensus in the United States, where admittedly they lack the necessary perspective to make the judgement, is that we have; that the man hailed as the messiah is, at best, a very average presidential boy indeed. Obama remains under incessant fire from left, right and centre over everything from his tonally confused response to the oil spill, via last week's unnervingly Blairesque appearance on a daytime chat show, to his deliberate neo-Marxist ruination of the thriving economy he inherited from George W Bush.
If the latter's re-election in 2004 confirmed how tough it is, for the breathing, to be a one-term US president, the failure of both W's father and Jimmy Carter highlights the peril when the economy, and specifically job creation, is sluggish. With even a distant election, the only useful guide is the betting, and for the first time on Betfair, Obama has drifted to odds-against for 2012. The fact that the professional money makes him more likely to lose packs an even stronger psychological punch than approval ratings down to about 45 per cent and slowly sinking by the week.
With the US economy growing and seemingly on course to avoid that double-dip recession, the traditionally delayed improvement in job figures may yet revive his popularity when they come. Yet the suspicion remains that the loss of confidence, though he remains well liked, is due not to anything he has or hasn't done, but to what he is or isn't; and that his tonal failure to connect with his electorate, nebulous and hard to rectify as it is, poses his gravest threat.
Reflecting on his first, frantic 18 months in the White House, it's hard to imagine history rating them as other than a remarkable triumph...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
In a race on which a small fortune rests, fellow compulsive gamblers will confirm, there is often a moment of doubt when your horse comes under pressure and for an agonising while, it's unclear whether what looked a magnificent beast in the paddock is the thoroughbred you took it to be or yet another arthritic mule.
With Barack Obama, that moment has arrived. Those of us who bet the mortgage a couple of years ago must face the fear that, like so many hugely promising colts, he hasn't trained on. Try as we might, the question cannot be suppressed. Have we backed another schtummer after all?
The current consensus in the United States, where admittedly they lack the necessary perspective to make the judgement, is that we have; that the man hailed as the messiah is, at best, a very average presidential boy indeed. Obama remains under incessant fire from left, right and centre over everything from his tonally confused response to the oil spill, via last week's unnervingly Blairesque appearance on a daytime chat show, to his deliberate neo-Marxist ruination of the thriving economy he inherited from George W Bush.
If the latter's re-election in 2004 confirmed how tough it is, for the breathing, to be a one-term US president, the failure of both W's father and Jimmy Carter highlights the peril when the economy, and specifically job creation, is sluggish. With even a distant election, the only useful guide is the betting, and for the first time on Betfair, Obama has drifted to odds-against for 2012. The fact that the professional money makes him more likely to lose packs an even stronger psychological punch than approval ratings down to about 45 per cent and slowly sinking by the week.
With the US economy growing and seemingly on course to avoid that double-dip recession, the traditionally delayed improvement in job figures may yet revive his popularity when they come. Yet the suspicion remains that the loss of confidence, though he remains well liked, is due not to anything he has or hasn't done, but to what he is or isn't; and that his tonal failure to connect with his electorate, nebulous and hard to rectify as it is, poses his gravest threat.
Reflecting on his first, frantic 18 months in the White House, it's hard to imagine history rating them as other than a remarkable triumph...