Timing is Everything

George H.W. Bush’s poll numbers in the fall of 1991 were nearly as high as those of his son ten years later in the aftermath of 9/11. They were a consequence of having just repelled Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.  It had been heralded for a month and our response was delayed for several days. There are those of us who wondered why we ignored the threat as long as we did, even having our Iraq Ambassador tell Saddam that we were not interested in Arab Vs Arab conflicts. There were questions as to whether Bush had set up an ambush.  What was not generally known is that Margaret Thatcher, days after the invasion, reminded Bush how her action against the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands had added eight years to her career. This led to his belated reaction.  Had our 1992 election had been held a year earlier Bill Clinton might be known today as a former governor of Arkansas and failed presidential candidate. Unfortunately for Bush, Saddam was marching to his own drummer who was beating a year too soon. To say that in history timing can be everything is to proclaim the obvious.

Consider FDR and Obama, the stewards who inherited our two biggest financial crises of the past century. At the former’s inauguration on March 4, 1933 the Great Depression was in its fourth year with breadlines, Bonus Marches and other symptoms of the catastrophe already part of our national experience. The public was generally willing to accept whatever its new leader recommended. However long our current Great Recession had been in progress when Obama took the reins, its existence wasn’t widely evident until two months before his election. Whatever its duration and severity, he is being blamed by his enemies even though it began under George W. Bush. It can also be argued that the stage was set during the tenure of his three predecessors beginning with Reagan.

Fairly or not, FDR’s place is high in the historical presidential hierarchy. Still the Great Depression didn’t end until the fall of France in l940 when we started to spend big money creating jobs for things we weren’t certain to need and that a sizeable portion of the electorate opposed outright. But he had lifted the national spirit and, more important, he held together a nation that was threatening to fall apart with communists on the left, Father Coughlin types on the right and Huey Long’s followers somewhere in the stratosphere between.

Under Obama the nation is again coming apart. The merit of his initiatives to save and revive the economy and fix health care can be questioned. The wisdom of his purported plans to restore financial regulations that have been abandoned between the two disasters cannot. Both were the result of large scale unsecured and unrestrained speculation.

The final verdict on his presidency may rest, as it did in FDR’s, on his ability to hold the country together. Here he faces a problem other than timing, his race, which prevents him welcoming anybody’s hatred as FDR did with “money changers.” He is forced to be courteous to opponents who may fly the separate flags of Republicans and Tea baggers, but are united in one purpose, bringing about his failure and consequently the failure of the country. To be unhappy with the situation and to disagree on its proposed remedies is understandable. To be united in an attempt to destroy politically the one man who is in a position to help and unite us is unforgivable.