Babe's Eye View article

The other day I came across an article in the New York Times entitled, “The Education of a President” written by Peter Baker. The writer gave an excellent perspective on what went wrong in the first two years of the Obama presidency. Obama won on a platform of “change” that gave Americans high hopes and expectations.

Today, more and more Americans are getting disgruntled with the Obama administration and with the coming US midterm elections this November, the Democrats are expected to lose more seats in Congress. One cannot help but dwell on the similarities between Obama and President Noynoy Aquino. Both were young candidates who energized the electorate and rode on the crest of hope brought about by the jubilant promise of change.

Like the title of the article suggests, there are indeed a lot of things that P-Noy can learn from the experience of his American counterpart—lessons that could ultimately help him chart his way across the difficult and tricky path of governance and politics in a country like the Philippines where more and more of P-Noy’s “bosses” are born every year—a large majority of whom belong to the poor.

While not admitting that his stint has been less stellar than he would have wanted, Obama however talks of “tactical lessons” along the way and how hard it is to please everybody, with the left thinking he did too little and the right criticizing him for doing too much. Baker writes, “What is striking about Obama’s self-diagnosis is that by his own rendering, the figure of inspiration from 2008 neglected the inspiration after his election. He didn’t stay connected to the people who put him into office in the first place and those who considered him the embodiment of a new progressive movement…”

In a word, disillusionment had set in, seen in Obama’s approval ratings hitting an all-time low of 44.7 percent or an 18-point drop since he assumed office. According to the newest Gallup survey, 54 percent of Americans think Obama does not deserve a second term. This disillusionment was perhaps made worse by “the failure to communicate,” and make Americans believe that his administration was “going to do the right thing, even if (in the) short-term it was unpopular...you can’t neglect marketing and PR especially public opinion,” Obama concedes.

Perception is 90 percent of the game and perception is often driven by the ability to communicate a message effectively. It certainly won’t do, as one Democrat governor pointed out, if one loses out on the communications battle on major initiatives such as the healthcare reform program and the stimulus package. “That’s a refrain inside the White House as well: It’s a communication problem,” notes Baker. While this may sound familiar to Filipinos who have been closely following P-Noy and have seen how members of his communications group fumbled their way through the hostage-taking incident and the subsequent controversies involving administration officials, one good thing is that P-Noy is not running for re-election. He does not need to make popular decisions, but simply to take the “straight and right path.”

But one striking portion of the NYT article details how reality started sinking in for Obama, coupled with the rather belated recognition that one cannot change things overnight no matter how sincere you may be. “It’s not that we believed our own press or press releases, but there was definitely a sense at the beginning that we could really change Washington…we were overconfident,” one White House aide admitted. Indeed, this is a classic story of one man who wanted to change “the old ways” only to find that it’s easier said than done.

“Here’s a guy who ran as an outsider to change Washington who all of a sudden realized that just to deal with these issues, we were going to have to work with Washington to fix that,” the author quotes a senior aide as saying. Again, this is reminiscent of President Noynoy’s 100 Days speech where he spoke against those who wanted to bring back the old ways, which unfortunately has already become part of the Filipino way of life.

Resentment has also seeped in among Americans who are angry at the multibillion-dollar stimulus package given to floundering businesses. They feel, why should they sacrifice—tightening belts, depriving their children of new clothes, missing out on eating out and all other cost-cutting measures—and yet “folks in Washington…just seem to be printing money and spending it like nobody’s business”?

While the US President and his men may have reason to say Obama “inherited the worst problems of any president in years,” Americans have grown weary waiting for the rhetoric of change to become concrete and tangible. Again, this may sound familiar, where P-Noy may have to eventually stop blaming GMA for the country’s problems.

In a “big, messy democracy like (America), everything takes time. And we’re not a culture built on patience,” he admits, describing the policy tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans as something that has led people to conclude that, “This is the same old mess we’ve seen before.” This is what happens when expectations for what a president could accomplish are “very high and probably unrealistic.”

In the end, Obama had to do “unpopular things that…inevitably cost him”—a fact that P-Noy should always be aware of when faced by difficult situations that require hard decisions. In the end, being President is a never-ending learning process. Every single day is different from yesterday. What is important is to do what is right, because ultimately “right is might.”