Campaign for the U.S. Presidency When Barack

Campaign for the U.S. Presidency

When Barack Obama was elected to the presidency in 2008, it was a remarkable historical event; never before had an African-American achieved the highest office in the United States. And Obama was facing a daunting task; he was expected to bring the country out of the severe recession, create new jobs, to help the middle class regain its footing, stimulate the economy, and shore up the housing crisis as well. He promised to do these things -- and to kill bin Laden no matter where he was hiding -- and in terms of several of these promises, he succeeded. But in the dynamics of a presidential election -- especially in 2012, when corporations and wealthy individuals with personal agendas can pour millions into campaigns with no accountability as to the source (think the Citizens United decision in the Supreme Court) -- wild accusations and vicious smears become a significant part of the process.

This paper references themes from Brinkley's Chapter 32 (the "historic" election cycle of 2008; the decline of the Bush presidency; and the growing threat of fundamentalist terrorism), and from The New York Times and from the peer-reviewed journal, Policy Review.

Jon Decker, a media fellow at the conservative think tank, the Hoover Institution, writes that Obama won the 2008 election because: a) voters had "grown tired of eight years of Republican leadership under George W. Bush; b) Obama sold himself as a "new kind of political leader" who could unite a very polarized electorate; and c) Obama put together a coalition of young people, minorities, "upscale professionals, minorities" with a message of "hope and change" (Decker, 2012, p. 22). Fast forward to the 2012 presidential election and Decker writes that Obama's job approval ratings have dropped from 63% to "a little less than 47%" (Decker, 22).

Moreover, Decker (in a September 2012 scholarly article) asserted that the public sees the Affordable Care Act (Obama's signature domestic achievement, AKS "Obamacare") as "a bust," and job growth has slowed to "anemic levels"; hence, Decker's thesis is that Mitt Romney is poised to capitalize on the public mood which is upset about the lack of new jobs and wants Obamacare overturned. If Romney puts a "credible plan" forward, he will move into the White House, Decker asserts (33).

Meanwhile due to the Supreme Court decision in 2011 called Citizens United, untold millions (perhaps as much as $400 million) was pumped into attack ads against Obama in the "battleground" states (Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, et al.). Those attack ads (paid for by independent "super PACs" funded in part by former Bush advisor Karl Rove) were like "hand grenades" tossed into the middle of a presidential campaign, according to Jeremy Peters writing in The New York Times. One of the independent PACs, Crossroads GPS, funded an ad that claimed Obama was "Dishonest on taxes because he failed on jobs"; another roared that "Barack Obama wasted $800 billion on a failed stimulus"; still another claimed that Obama is "failing American families" (Peters, 2012).

But was Obama's first four years really that bad? Was he failing American families and did he really fail to create jobs?

Nicholas D. Kristof, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, admits that the economy "remains weak" and Obama has not been a good communicator. But he pointed out that the month Obama took office (January, 2009), the country lost 818,000 jobs, but his stimulus package (that Crossroads GPS said was a failed waste) "may have saved or created more than three million jobs" and his handling of the economic crisis was "impressive," Kristof points out. Moreover, Obama brought the troops home from Iraq, took out bin Laden, and showed "bold leadership" in his handling of the Libyan crisis (Kristof, 2012).