However, in poll-driven U.S. politics, such admonitions are probably not even necessary. Eight out of 10 Americans have a favourable opinion of Obama as he takes office, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll. Almost three-quarters of the public trust that his proposals will help reverse the economic downturn. And 71 per cent say that his convincing electoral victory has given him “a mandate to work for major new social and economic programs.” Allan J. Lichtman, a political historian at American University in Washington, says that at present, Obama enjoys almost unfettered power. “Congress is just like Wall Street—it operates on fear and greed. And right now, they are too afraid of standing in front of that freight train named Obama.”
As a keen student of history, what the new President also seems to have grasped is that the calamities he faces also provide him with unique opportunities. Crisis has long been the crucible of greatness, and almost all in the pantheon of American political heroes—Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy—were severely tested. “Great moments make great men,” says Mark Updegrove. He cites Teddy Roosevelt, who won a place on the side of Mount Rushmore for his crusades for social justice, the Panama Canal, and winning the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, as perhaps the only revered U.S. president to have governed in “non-challenging” times. It’s a select club that Bill Clinton, for example, will never join, despite his early promise and vast personal popularity. His accomplishments will be judged too few, argues Updegrove, and his presidency was fatally tainted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “The times were just not on his side.”
Doris Kearns Goodwin takes a similar view of the obstacles and opportunities in Obama’s future. “There’s a reason why so many of our greatest leaders have been wartime presidents,” she says. “In a time of crisis they have both terrible challenges but also greater opportunities to really move the country because people come together.” It’s a phenomenon that Obama well understands and fully intends to harness, says the historian. “It gives him an opportunity to do more things than he would otherwise be able to do in our separation-of-powers government.”
What Obama may want to keep in mind is that the cheering throngs, sky-high polling numbers and editorial endorsements can be short-lived. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, George W. Bush had an 89 per cent approval rating. By the time he left office this week, it was somewhere around 30 per cent, and only 16 per cent of respondents said he will go down in history as an “outstanding” or even “above average” president. Indeed, Herbert Hoover, a former secretary of commerce and global hero for his efforts to feed the starving people of Belgium during the First World War, seemed destined for greatness when he ascended to the presidency in 1929. “The newspaper accounts were just glowing,” says Allan Lichtman. “They said, ‘the one thing we won’t have to worry about with Herbert Hoover is the economy.’ ”
The stock market crash of October 1929 quickly changed all that. And as the economy imploded, Hoover seemed incapable, or unwilling, to take meaningful action—in 1931 alone, 2,300 banks collapsed in the U.S. Haunted by the starvation he had witnessed in Belgium, the president refused to visit the soup kitchens that dotted the land. And rather than listen to the public’s complaints, he insisted in continuing to deliver dust-dry lectures to the electorate. (“I can’t imagine that the American people aren’t willing to listen for an hour to the subjects that are vital to their lives,” he once told his exasperated advisers.) He was soon the most-hated man in the country, his very name synonymous with failure. The cardboard and tin shantytowns were called “Hoovervilles,” the newspapers the poor huddled under “Hoover blankets.” Time magazine labelled him “President Reject.” Vast portions of the public came to believe rumours that he had a hand in one of the era’s greatest scandals, the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. It was a transformation that haunted him for the rest of his long life (he died in 1964 at the age of 90). “The fall from those lofty expectations added to his woes and personal anxiety,” says Lichtman.
And it’s an example that Obama should heed for more than a couple of reasons. Hoover too was a great admirer of Lincoln, reports one of his biographers, Richard Norton Smith. His White House was stuffed with mementoes of the 16th president. And when he travelled overseas, Hoover even carried a steel engraving of the Great Emancipator. Proof that being a keen student of history isn’t enough to guarantee that an American president will be among its successes.
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