Jayne Dowle: So why did the audacity of hope just drain away under Barack Obama?

HER husband campaigned his way to power on a slogan of hope, yet Michelle Obama says that the country he has led for almost a decade has lost the very quality he promised to bring forth.
First lady Michelle Obama hugs President Barack Obama after his farewell address at McCormick Place in Chicago.First lady Michelle Obama hugs President Barack Obama after his farewell address at McCormick Place in Chicago.
First lady Michelle Obama hugs President Barack Obama after his farewell address at McCormick Place in Chicago.

“I think that we feel the difference… now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like,” Mrs Obama told Oprah Winfrey shortly after the Republican candidate Donald Trump was elected to the US Presidency.

As the world braces itself for his inauguration this week, is hope really in such short supply? Michelle Obama is clearly expressing the absolute despair experienced by countless liberal citizens when Trump took to the podium triumphant last November.

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However, if you happen to be one of the millions who voted for him, you might argue that hope died a long time before the billionaire with questionable morals and no political experience even decided to run for office.

Indeed, it is fair to say that the failure of the hope promised by Obama was the very thing which turned lifelong Democrat supporters away from Hillary Clinton and sent them straight into the arms of Trump.

And, it is arguable that Trump’s trick was to offer his very own kind of hope. Unlike Obama, whose 2008 election campaign was dominated by uncompromising posters bearing his face and the word “hope” – along with “change” and “progress” – Trump largely left it hanging in the air.

For him, hope was less a slogan, more an empty vacuum swirling with national frustration, anger and disappointment. What Trump represented, especially to blue-collar voters in the post-industrial “rust-bucket” states, the rural poor and the struggling urban working class, was a very different kind of hope.

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It was one that understood their language, sensed their pain and identified with their fears over immigration, social welfare and America’s position in the world. It was the hope that – at last – someone would listen, rather than riding roughshod over their concerns with soothing words that amounted to nothing more than a hill of beans.

If you look closely at what Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey, you will notice that she uses the word “feel” a lot. Some would say that only Americans such as her – privileged, rich, well-educated – have the luxury of feelings these days. In the America which chose Trump, there is not much room for sentiment. In its place there is simply a sinking desperation.

Why then did Obama’s promise of hope fail? If you look only at the positive milestones of his time, it’s hard to say what went wrong. On balance, things were achieved that represented a positive step forward for the majority of Americans. His healthcare reforms in 2014 for example, unpopular as they were in certain circles, did provide unprecedented medical protection for 32 million uninsured individuals. In setting this in motion, he achieved a triumph hitherto failed by every single one of his Presidential predecessors.

The decisions he took to re-ignite the economy following the catastrophic credit crunch which raged all around him as he came to office, the cash injection to promote more private-sector jobs, and the tough stance he took with Wall Street were in essence, all intended to further the interests of “ordinary” Americans and prevent them from further fiscal despair.

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Yet, despite all this, his party could not retain the support of those he purported to help. Why? Let’s ask the killer question, shall we? If Obama had been in a position to run for office in 2016, would his own achievements have carried him forth? Or was it the lack of trust the electorate had in Hillary Clinton which did for the Democrats? I don’t suppose we will ever know the definitive answer to that. What we do know is that although Obama had plenty of critics, he did not do anything reprehensibly wrong.

He leaves office with no scandal attached either to his own name, or to any member of his family. Even the most God-fearing of conservative Americans would struggle to find a blemish.

Yet again then, we must ask why hope began to ebb away. The ironic thing is that Obama’s victories themselves appear to have contributed to his failure. His government managed to not only end the war in Iraq but eliminate Osama Bin Laden and contribute to the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The problem was that even with these not inconsiderable notches on his belt, the elusive quality of hope he sought never came to pass. From our vantage point across the pond, we can only conclude that the problem does not appear to lie with the President, but with the American people themselves. Do they expect not a leader, but a miracle worker?

One man alone – despite his achievements and successes – cannot transform their lives, or alter fortunes. And Donald Trump, imperious as he may be, is about to find that out for himself.