Manifest Hope? by Eric Turner

While in Washington, I stopped by “Manifest Hope”, which featured various pop-art works portraying President Barack Obama: Obama as a family man, as a common worker, as a civil rights icon, as Superman, as Lincoln reincarnate, as a peacemaker, and a variety of other wide-ranging manifestations. While realizing that the art was sensationalized, I was still interested to see how different people view Obama’s presidency.

One group’s advertisement thanked Obama for being a defender of traditional marriage, while another group’s advertisement stated that they stood alongside Obama for gay marriage rights. Depending on what advertisement you were reading, you’d be lead to believe Obama was everything from an anti-abortion activist who would close the border to Mexico to a human rights crusader who would finally bring peace and prosperity to Africa.

Why all the different, even contradictory, interpretations of Obama’s presidency and his agenda? Whether deliberate or intentional, Obama’s campaign, which focused on optimism and a general idea of changing the way the country is run, has given a number of groups and individuals the idea that their agendas, desires, and long-lasting problems may finally be coming to an end. A gay-rights group may believe that hope and change will finally bring the rights they want, even if Obama has explicitly stated his opposition to same-sex marriage. A factory worker who has lost his job to overseas competition may believe that hope and change will enable his factory to reopen, even though Obama hasn’t come out against such competition. A Palestinian rights group may believe that hope and change will lead to an upheaval of the country’s status quo and result in more sympathy and support for Palestinians, even though Obama’s solutions for Palestine are still vague.

While the ‘hope and change’ theme was tremendously successful in Obama’s campaign, it now presents pressure and problems for the new administration. While optimism runs high now, Obama’s administration will need to deliver actual results lest they be seen as running a smoke-and-mirrors campaign with the general public. But what is Obama to do when, like seen above, two contesting groups of people both believe he is on their side?

This is likely to be an issue that follows Obama throughout his presidency: when so many people have bought into the idea that Obama will change the country and the world to their liking, a large number of people are bound to be disappointed. In another four years, assuming Obama is up for reelection, it is doubtful that we will see such instances of people projecting their own views onto Obama, as we will have a better understanding of where his administration stands on certain issues.

This is not to say that people are wrong or stupid for believing this way, or to say Obama is wrong for encouraging such views: in a country with a struggling economy that has had a negative view of it’s president for at least 3 years, people cannot be blamed for hoping for better times ahead, and both Obama and John McCain included hope and change in their campaign rhetoric. It’s merely a look at this highly unusual case of a president that has a 70% approval rating before stepping into the Oval Office, a figure many people believe to be the savior to the issues facing them, someone who has started to be mentioned in the same sentences as great Americans like Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln before he takes the Oath of Office. The pressures facing Obama are great, and only time will tell if he can live up to these lofty standards.