In Springfield, Illinois, Barack Obama flashed a smile, bounded on stage in a long dark coat, and vowed, like his political hero, to “transform a nation” and unleash a wave of hope and change.
He looked as fresh as the frigid air in which thousands had gathered, wrapped up in scarves and winter coats, to witness the launch of a campaign that, improbably, would end in the White House.
Eight years later, the end of Obama’s grueling, crisis-addled administration is in sight and his supporters have learned by experience how much harder it is to be President than to run for the office. Dreams of a new bipartisan era have given way to constant confrontations with a Congress that is now completely controlled by Republicans, many of whom are on a mission to dismantle much of Obama’s agenda. The situation isn’t much better on the global front, where Obama continues to grapple with all-too-familiar foreign policy challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan along with new threats from Russia.
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From Tuesday, Obama’s time left in the White House will be shorter than the time it took him to win the presidency, and his 2007 speech has become a cautionary tale of the gulf between powerful campaign rhetoric and reality. It also remains a guidepost to the political philosophy that has underpinned the Obama administration and a reference point for both backers and critics as they write history’s first draft on his presidency.
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But the President, his hair now speckled with white, insists he was not naive.
In the State of the Union, as much an argument to future historians as a policy wish list, Obama offered his own rebuttal to his critics.
He reprised the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, which paved the way for his 2007 announcement, in which he declared there “wasn’t a liberal America, or a conservative America; a black America or a white America, but a United States of America.”
“Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency has not delivered on this vision,” he said. “But I still think the cynics are wrong.”
