Daily World Buzz: The year of Barack Obama

"Mele Kalikimaka." Merry Christmas in Hawaiian. Barack Obama has given hope just got out of the lineup of the plane that brought him to Hawaii, where the president spent with family and old friends a few times in Chicago, the year-end holidays. It 'been a troubled 2010 for him to come to the White House in the wake of one of the most striking phenomena of collective fascination with the past few decades, and soon scontratosi with the reality of government, the opposition Republican, the tangle of power and interests of a complex society.

2010 was the year of breaking the spell of Obama and his base (the president has lost the support of much more liberal electorate), the "thrashing" of the midterm elections, but also of fundamental reforms and waited for decades. Started with the new terror alert, triggered by suicide bombers in flight between Amsterdam and Detroit, the year ended with the ratification of the New Start, with tax cuts and the law on gays in the military.

If that is not to tip the "American system" that many had hoped in 2008, it is a remarkable political agenda that deserves to be revisited. SCOTT BROWN. The year starts in the worst way for Barack Obama. In the election on Jan. 19 in Massachusetts, to assign the seat left vacant after the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, the check is a Republican, Scott Brown.

The Democrats lost in one of the strongholds of liberalism. They play, against them, the popular anger against the rescue of big banks, the federal deficit, unemployment rates at 9.7%. It 's a portent of what will happen later, at the midterm elections. It 's a major political figure, as well as symbolic.

The Democrats lost because the 60 votes necessary to overcome Republican filibuster in the Senate. Bipartisanship. And 'one of the words most often mentioned in 2010. In February, while Washington and the East Coast I am hard pressed by the heavy snowfall over the past few years, the political climate becomes hot.

The president relies on the cooperation between the parties but does very little to achieve it. The Republicans are invited to the White House for the first time, just in February. "Being bipartisan can not mean abdication of their democratic values," said Obama. "Being bipartisan does not mean writing the laws and then claim the Republican support," replied John Boenher, Republican leader of the House.

The bipartisanship will still be a necessity when, on January 5, will meet the new Congress. With the new Republican majority in the House, Obama will have to find some form of collaboration (if you do not want to end up like Bill Clinton, cut in half after the "Republican Revolution" of 1994).

BIG THINGS. "We were able to do great things," exclaimed a jubilant Obama on March 21. After months of screaming, protests, movements of the Palace, the House approved the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the U.S. health care reform. If Obama has to give up the public, the new law extends assistance to more than 30 million Americans.

Have health insurance becomes an obligation. State subsidies for the poor and more stringent limits for insurance companies complete a reform that gives Obama a place in history. What can the President had failed to Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton. The law compact but also the opposition of all enemies of the White House.

E 'in recent months that the Tea Party became, by the protest movement, national political force. E 'in recent months that the American liberal, libertarian, anarchist, capitalist, conservative, reactionary, and deepens his critique of the "socialist" and statist Obama. "They want war? The will, "Obama replied.

The war continues, and it is not that Obama is winning. A judge in Virginia last December 13, held unconstitutional the requirement to have insurance. The American impulse to keep the state out of their lives is perhaps deeper than Obama himself had calculated. THE FALL. The April 20 explosion devastates the Deepwater Horizon.

17 people die. The platform sinks into the flames in the Gulf of Mexico. Four days later, the oil leaking from the property covers an area of about one mile. The stain spreads quickly. Terms such as blowout preventer, top kill, kill static, become familiar to the average American. It 'an environmental disaster of incalculable dimensions.

It 'another manifestation of incompetence and greed of a large corporation. It 'another stone on the path of the president. Obama tries to appear more assertive as possible. Threat to BP executives "to kick in the pants." Spend your vacation in Louisiana, to demonstrate that the beaches are clean and safe.

Not much use. A survey of AP / GfK shows that for Americans Obama's handling of the disaster in the Gulf as George W. Bush handled Katrina. When, in late August, the hole is closed, a further piece of its credibility was in tatters. "He started walking on the water. He finished dragging the crude ", say his enemies.

More likely, "are the obstacles that Obama has faced, to be intractable," says Fred Greenstein, the historian of U.S. presidents. WHAT RECOVERY? Throughout 2010, the unemployment rate in the United States remains dangerously close to 10%. Lower than expected from the effects of 814 billion package of economic incentives.

Yet something is moving. GM and Chrysler, recipients of tens of billions of bailout, they return to record profits and take. But the overall tone remains particularly bleak. Thousands of people continue to look at the houses requisitioned. And unemployment, the real thread that runs through 2010, continues to mark the lives of many.

When, in July, Obama proclaims, "the summer of recovery, many are asking:" What recovery? ". THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF. Obama has never aroused great enthusiasm among the military of the Pentagon. Contempt, in a sense, the open derision, emerge with the interview of General Stanley McChrystal to "Rolling Stone".

The commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan paints a White House made of wishful thinking and civil litigants. The interview earned him dismissal and replacement with the idol of neoconDavid Petraeus. Obama's strategy in Afghanistan, however, continues to look uncertain, ranging from withdrawal and will need the ongoing war (30 thousand new soldiers leave for Afghanistan, while thousands of others returning from Iraq).

In the end Obama loses the support of his base more liberal and pacifist, without gaining the consent of the hawks. In May, in Afghanistan, the thousandth American soldier dies, the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. " The beating. On November 2, 2010, will be remembered in the annals of American politics as a day of "beating".

It 'the same to define Obama as the Democratic defeat in midterm elections. Driven by unemployment, economic crisis, populist furor, the Republicans win the House and Senate to move forward. The Tea Party, the winning horse that acts as a catalyst for all the conservatives of America, won the senatorial seats in Florida, Kentucky and Utah.

Obama said he had "learned my lesson." Throughout the campaign, aware of his popularity nose-diving, the president shows up only in urban areas. And deep in rural America, send the old lions Joe Biden and Bill Clinton. HAPPY END? It 's another incident last week to inaugurate the year of Barack Obama.

The publication, by Wikileaks, to 250 000 dispatches from the State Department, raised allegations of political naivete facing the administration. But Obama goes on and proves that, under the political Hamlet and often elusive, lurks a fighter decided to sell life dearly. The president gets along with Republicans, to pass tax cuts for the rich and middle class (900 billion to be added to other debt).

Gets the vote of Congress for the New Start, the nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia, ripping the "yes" to a handful of Republican senators and to uphold its international credibility. Do something that appeals to the base of the left, after 17 years by eliminating the ban on homosexuals in the military (even symbolically, a great thing: he, the first black president, which eliminates a bastion of oppression and prejudice).

E ', this happy ending, the "great success" trumpeted by the White House, which lifts the fortunes of a presidency in trouble? Not really. E ', more realistically, a political shot in the arm, allowing Obama to go ahead, prepare for upcoming challenges (immigration, environment, debt relief), to construct a candidate for president 2012.

Knowing him and us, that "man of destiny" no longer exists. And that dream has been, hopelessly undermined by reality.