(HOST) As President-elect Obama prepares for a challenging term, teacher, historian, and commentator Vic Henningsen is thinking about promises – and how they sometimes come back to haunt us.
(HENNINGSEN) For those who could stand it, this was a terrific year for campaign ads. My favorite was a McCain web spot spoofing Barack Obama as the "Chosen One", ready to save the world. It featured Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments parting the Red Sea to reveal an Obama sign,
As ads go, this was pretty good-natured and made a legitimate point about Obama’s inexperience. I’m reminded of it not for what it suggested about then-candidate Obama, but for what it says about the rest of us as we consider president-elect Obama.
Let’s be clear that, despite our collective euphoria over the historic nature of this election, it’s less a mandate for Obama than a repudiation of President Bush and a signal that most Americans simply didn’t regard John McCain as the right man for the tough times ahead. A majority of Americans went for Obama not because he was "The One", but because he seemed the better alternative – a smarter bet, but still a bet.
Obama understands this and he’s working to get us to face facts: things are very tough and it’s going to take all of us a lot of hard work and a lot of time to get out of this hole. But I’m not sure we’re listening. We want to be carried by the euphoria of November 4th; we want to believe that he’ll resolve the financial crisis; end the Iraq war; develop a progressive energy policy; provide universal health care – he’ll do it all!
In American politics, overselling is both a fact of life and the kiss of death. Wilson’s unrealistic claims for World War I as a "War to end war" set the nation up for the disappointed isolationism of the ’20’s and 30’s. Kennedy’s extravagant promise that America would "pay any price, bear any burden" helped mire us in Vietnam.
When it became clear that Johnson’s much-hyped Great Society – designed to end poverty, reform education, and revolutionize healthcare – would do none of those things, we slipped into the malaise of the 1970’s. Reagan’s easy assurances of "Morning again in America" led to huge growth in income inequality and a colossal national debt. They shouldn’t have made those promises. More importantly, we shouldn’t have swallowed them whole.
And that’s my concern – our historical tendency to believe unrealistic promises. Reinforced by candidates’ assurances that our problems will be solved, our natural optimism turns to expectation, which often becomes entitlement. When our wishes aren’t gratified we experience frustration and anger, which sour into bitterness and cynicism. The cycle of promise, expectation, disappointment, and backlash has occurred over and over again.
The President-elect may regret some – perhaps many – of his campaign promises. Having helped to raise our hopes, he now appears to be working hard to lower unrealistic expectations. But frankly, it’s not him I worry about.
It’s us.