The soft power of his Transformative Presidency wrecked on the hard rock of American political realities
Obama's Fatal Dilemma
17/09/2012
- Opinión
In her November 2008 article in the Guardian (UK), "The New Cicero", http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/barack-obama-usa1 Charlotte Higgins, a journalist with a background in classical studies, drew attention to Obama's great oratorical skill, comparing it with that of the famous Roman writer and Senator, Cicero, the greatest orator of the Classical period and one of the most influential political players in Ancient Rome. Affirming that, "during the Roman republic (and in ancient Athens) politics was oratory", Higgins suggested: "to understand the next four years of American politics, you are going to need to understand something of the politics of ancient Greece and Rome."
In the light of Higgins' comparison and suggestion, it is not inappropriate to employ a Classical analogy to illustrate Obama's fundamental dilemma. In Ancient Greek legendary history, Scylla (a rock shoal) and Charybdis (a whirlpool) represented two mortal dangers for sailors who navigated the Straits of Messina, which separated the southern tip of Italy and Sicily. Sailors in Ancient times had to make the potentially fatal choice, namely, which of the two dangers they should avoid by steering their ship perilously close to the other danger. In Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey, Ulysses chose to steer his ship close to Scylla and lose only a few sailors, rather than risk losing his ship and entire crew in the Charybdis whirlpool.
To be a genuinely transformative President, Obama had to navigate the ship of state in the perilous waters of the Straits that separated liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans while, at the same time, avoiding being shipwrecked on the Scylla of the Democratic (extreme) Left or on the Charybdis of the Republican (extreme) Right. It is a bitter sweet irony that Obama succeeded in convincing a large section of the American public, including important opinion-makers, that he was the person who could overcome those redoubtable obstacles and transform American national politics. The bitter sweet irony is that their great disillusionment at his failure to do so is perhaps the shoal on which his hopes of re-election might well founder.
https://www.alainet.org/fr/node/161079
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