No We Can’t? Searching for Obama’s Audacity in the Post-Midterm World

Immediately following the midterm elections, newspaper headlines from around the world told the tale of an American president embarrassingly “defeated” and “apologetic” of his presidency thus far.
From titles such as “No We Can’t” in the Kuwait Times to “Obama Admits He Needs ‘to Do a Better Job’ After Election Beating” in the London Guardian,to pouting faces of Obama on front pages from Brazil to China, the international media has cast Obama as a chastised president of remorseful policies.
Sadly, Obama sealed his own fate, particularly in the midterms, by allowing the media, Republicans, and even some Democrats, to spin his hard-fought achievements against him.
It’s a mystery to me how easily the country has rendered Obama, the most effective progressive since FDR who managed the largest economic disaster since the 1930s while passing healthcare reform, financial reform, winding down the war in Iraq, engaging with the Muslim World, significantly expanding Pell grants for low-income college students, appointing more openly gay officials than any other president, creating more private sector jobs than during entire Bush years, signing a new START Treaty with Russia, increasing fuel economy standards, and repealing restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, as a delinquent, incompetent president out of touch with America’s problems.
And yet, much of this portrayal I fault with Obama’s recent demeanor.  Instead of touting his impressive record, Obama took a defeatist line after the midterms and promised that in the future he would simply try to “do a better job.”
Now that’s an Obama we haven’t seen before.
And yet unfortunately, it’s an Obama of whom we will probably see more and more.  In his Op-Ed in the NY Times yesterday, Obama wrote about his upcoming trip to Asia that surprised me in one line.  He wrote: “If we can, we’ll be able to complete an agreement that supports jobs and prosperity in America.”
If we can?
What happened to yes we can?
Obama needs to pull together in the wake of his party’s bloody midterm results to regain the confidence in his policies and penchant to radiate hope that propelled him to office in the first place.
Otherwise, Republicans and Democrats alike will simply be battling it out in Congress, conducting phony investigations, and bickering about power, while attempting to fix American problems, “if they can.”
Photo Credits: Newseum.org