PRESIDENT OBAMA AND A MISSED OPPORTUNITY - HE NEEDED TO HAVE BEEN MORE PUTINESQES! PART 1
As we watched President Obama, POTUS, scurrying around the world, with alternating beaming smile or frown or demure on his face, saying goodbyes to and trying to reassure his international political friends and colleagues, many of us cannot but shake our heads in disbelief, at his failure to deliver even half of what he had promised back in 2008.
Having had white anglo-Saxon men from the elite classes lording it over their fellow Americans and the world for the past 240, since the United States became an independent Union, that country's first African-American President, was seen as its greatest hope - yes, the Black Hope - of moving the country towards a more progressive path; both nationally and internationally.
In acknowledgement of hope, that aspiration, the Nobel Peace Prize committee did something which it had probably not done before. It awarded President Barak Obama the Peace Prize. The President had just ascended to the Presidential Throne, so he was not awarded the Prize for works he had already done, or goals he had achieved. He was awarded it in anticipation of the achievements the Nobel Peace Prize committee, based on what he had been saying in his campaign - 'Yes,We Can.' - believed he would have achieved.
President Barak Obama was seen as the 'peace President'. The 'progressive' President. The President who was not going to be simply succumb to the 'business as usual' approach of leading America. Not a President who would be at the mercy of the various lobbists who infests the corridors of power in the Congress.
And yet, after all this unmet expectation of President Obama, we must wonder, how is it that he, in the closing couple of months before he leaves office and is consigned to history as, not only just another former President, because, being the first African-American President, he and everybody else can expect that he will be judged by history more harshly than his white male colleagues, we can but wonder what is it that he has to smile about?
We can assume that it is probably the relief of being freed - free at last - from the heavy burden of being in a post chained by 'the pragmatism of power.' And yet, even if the President is feeling buoyant about being freed of the burden of being in a powerful position, but not having the power to make much difference, especially on the national level, we also know that he should be feeling threatened about the possible, if not likely destruction of his paltry legacy.
We know that President Obama's attempts to reassure his European and other partners about continuity in their multilateral agreements and partnership with America, after Donald Trump and his Republicon Party take over the White House on 20th January 2017, can only be an assurance to fools.
And we know this because we know that President Obama's 'flagship' partial successes, such as Obamacare, such as the nuclear agreement with Iran, such as the ending of the trade and diplomatic embargo against Cuba, such as TPP, etc, are all under threat or attack by the incoming Republicon Administration. So, we can ask the question again, why the smile on the President's face? Why the attempt to paint an optimistic facade onto what is a very worrying situation?
To be continued.
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