A LITTLE while ago, I had developed the theory that the American Presidency is really  on a two-year Presidency – the first two years being a frantic attempt to execute the mandate handed down by the people; the second half, in virtual campaign mode, defending the mandate while trying to get themselves, or their party representatives, [re]elected.
Even with our election possibly weeks away, we cannot begin to compare – even in relative terms – to the level of electioneering taking place in America today, even with their elections scheduled to take place a year from now.  Even as the Republican party is in the throes of selecting a leader from a lineup of parochial strong men, rehashed presidential hopefuls, and elements of the lunatic fringe, President Barack Obama has been engaged in political firefighting, putting down one issue even as another one flares up.

After putting the ‘birther’ issue to rest, and killing Osama bin Laden, he’s attacked on jobs.  Striving to put the economy back in order, he has to face unprecedented opposition on the debt ceiling issue. Struggling to ensure that the gap between rich and poor in America doesn’t get wider even as the economy is in trouble, he is attacked on his Buffet Rule Tax which taxes richer Americans. Perhaps most sickening, particularly considering the recent revelations that a growing number of persons mainly children in the wealthiest country in the world do not have access to basic health care (poverty is also on the rise), is the opposition that was received by ‘Obamacare’.
What is at work here is this mindless machine, this relentless force, the main purpose of which is not to legitimately interrogate but to oppose on every possible front in which opposition seems even barely legitimate.   Compared to the Presidency of Bill Clinton for example, even with Republican control of both houses of Congress, the greatest opposition Clinton faced came out of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
We need to call it like it is.  There is a clear underbelly of racism that is running through American politics today. On Friday night, I was watching the Piers Morgan interview of Morgan Freeman, who summed it up clearly and unwaveringly:
“The tea partiers, who are controlling the Republican Party,  publicly stated their policy is to do whatever it takes to ensure that Obama only serves one term.  What underlines that?  Screw the country; we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man out of here.”
The greatest challenge facing the administration of Barack Obama today is not legitimate criticism and opposition but an attempt to depose him from government by undermining and unraveling not only his presidency but the very fabric of America if that means justifies the end.  What we have here is a self-justifying and self-fulfilling prejudice at work.  In the minds of a large section of America, and the people who represent them, and who come from them, is the concept that Barack Obama – being racially deficient – is not fit to rule, and then they have gone about trying to prove precisely that.
And his presidency is feeling it, as is most apparent in his departure from some of his core principles.  The same Obama who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than a proper year into office has traded off his ideals of global consensus and the respect for individual dignity of people all over the world, has now chosen to unilaterally use America’s veto power against Palestine’s bid for statehood.  The visionary who promised a strong, moral international leadership as a departure from the global cowboy antics of George Bush Jr. and his merry band of neo-conservative hawks, has based a crucial foreign policy decision on his need to appease the small but powerful pro-Israel lobby and the Christian conservative right.
When Obama won the election in 2008, we were all ecstatic. What greater sign of things to come could there be than the sole global democratic superpower having leapt the potentially paralyzing hurdle of racism to elect the son of a black African immigrant, half a century after segregation.  
Today, that assessment seems premature.  From the evidence, what appeared back then to be a genuine moment of enlightenment by America now appears to have been a mixture of genuine support and complacency by that country’s racist heartland.  And today, it appears that the latter are intent on viciously correcting their error.  If Obama gets re-elected, and perhaps even more so if not, America is going to have to take a long, hard look at itself in the mirror. 
As an aside, at the time of writing this article, I was hopeful that debris from the falling satellite would damage my property so that I can come in to a few million dollars from NASA.