Learning the Hard Way

I was originally a supporter of Hillary Clinton-with reservations-and had always thought that a Clinton/Obama ticket was the correct path.

It wasn't that I didn't like Obama-I voted for him- but I was troubled by the thought that being a great speaker driven by a vision of America that coincided in the main with my own was perhaps not enough. Bluntly put, my concern with Obama was that he was too much a humanist thinker, and not enough of a realist.

Anyone with a conscience couldn't help, for example, to appreciate Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Plan for Perpetual Peace" in which he essentially promotes the creation of a federal republic as a means of ensuring peace-in the Europe of his time.

But even Rousseau recognized the weakness in his essay highlighting the contradictions between the "humanity of maxims and the violence of the wars, a gentle religion and bloody intolerance, a 'politics so wise in books and so harsh in practice'".

Equally, anyone reading Hans Morgenthau's "Principles of Political Realism", especially if they are willing to accept the concept that political realism requires "a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible" and is therefore only concerned with the rational, objective and unemotional can't help but appreciate the clarity of thought he presents, even if one has misgivings about the 'end justifies the means" nature of his ideas.

Mr Obama is currently caught between the two, which I describe as the battleground between utopian idealism, and the sleazy realities of power politics.

I believe the first two years of his Administration, despite the incredible progress he achieved with the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ARRA- which staved off a Depression, health reform, and the Dodd-Frank financial reform law—were haunted by the belief of the electorate that thought he was going to lead the nation to the "promised land"-while forgetting even Moses took 40 years in the desert to get there.

No, these mid-term elections have been a punishing lesson on the fickleness of the electorate, on the ignorance of the electorate, and of the realities of government. I think that Mr Obama will realise that he has to move from the pulpit to the presidency-assuming a great deal of Mr Morgenthau's realism, and get re-elected in 2012.