One year after President Barack Obama's historic election in the name of "change" and "hope," Gallup and USA Today report that the U.S. citizenry's initially high expectations of the Obama presidency have fallen along with the president's popularity.

 

In November of 2008, 67 percent of the American population thought that the Obama administrations would be able to reduce unemployment.  By mid-October of 2009, just barely more than half (51 percent) believed that. 

 

In the month of the president's election, 64 percent of Americans told Gallup and USA Today that the next White House would be able "to improve the health care system." Fifty-eight (58) percent thought President Obama would be able to "bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan in way that's not harmful to the U.S."

 

Eleven and a half months later, just 46 percent believed that Obama could improve health care.  The same exact percentage (46) thought the same way about Obama and Afghanistan (Susan Page, "Obama's Election One Year Later," USA Today, October 28, 2009, pp. 1A, 5A).

 

At one level, we might consider these reduced expectations something of a victory for the American corporate and imperial power elite.  Realistically or not, much of the majority U.S. working class populace wanted certain things from the Obama presidency.

 

The things hoped for included increased employment opportunities and wages, a roll back of war and militarism, universal and adequate health care, rebuilt infrastructure, serious efforts to fix the environmental crisis, reduced inequality, and generally improved life circumstances for ordinary people.

 

The corporate and imperial ruling class that backed Obama's campaign and staffed many of his key cabinet and other policymaking positions had different priorities for America. They wanted Obama to foster an illusion of democratic change that worked to prevent popular rebellion. They wanted the new administration to save and restore legitimacy to their damaged profits system and empire.

 

They desired a public relations makeover along improved governance for American Empire and Inequality in the wake of the grossly incompetent, unpopular, and messianic-militarist Bush-Cheney administration and the related epic financial meltdown of September-October 2008. 

 

They wanted the Obama's "progressive" triumph to cloak a deeper underlying triumph of conservatism.  They wanted new and deceptive clothes for the persistence of the old regime.  They wanted a re-branding without a restructuring - without any serious questioning of underlying institutions, and ideologies. 

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November 04, 09