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Election Year 2012: When The Reality Principle Trumps the Audacity of Hope | TIME Ideas | TIME.com
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PRESIDENCY

Election Year 2012: When The Reality Principle Trumps the Audacity of Hope
If the 2008 election was inspiring, 2012 is shaping up to be its opposite
By JUDITH WARNER | @judithwarner | June 22, 2012 |

Win McNamee / Getty Images

WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGES

Barack Obama addresses a primary night rally in the gymnasium at the Nashua South High School on January 8, 2008 in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Do you remember how life felt four years ago? For some of us, at least, it was a gripping time of high Warner's latest book is We've emotion. The Hillary Clinton campaign had just wound down, or ground down, or (depending on Got Issues: how you saw it) died a slow angry death but Clintons withdrawal speech, with its reference to the Children and Parents in the light shining through the 18 million cracks in the nations highest, hardest glass ceiling was still Age of throat-lumpingly fresh. Unbelievably, we had our first highly electable African American Medication. presidential candidate, a man so sui generis that reminders of our not-so-perfect past, like thenprimary candidate Joe Bidens faint praise of his then-rival as articulate and bright and clean, could easily be laughed off as an anachronistic relic that proclaimed, even more strongly and loudly, just how far we the American electorate had come. (MORE: The Undefeated: Her Holiness Sarah Palin) The Sarah Palin candidacy was the first sign of trouble in this would-be paradise. Not Palin herself so much as her supporters, those passionate, adoring women, eager indeed, desperate for validation and vindication in the post-Hillary, Michelle-rising moment. Palin, droppin her gs, mangling her syntax, gun at the hip, baby in the wings, opened fire in the newest, perhaps nastiest phase of Americas never-ending culture war. Dont get too caught up in your foofy fantasy of hope, her Neiman Marcus-costumed populist persona proclaimed; were not coming along with you. The years since Barack Obamas election have born this promise out: Americans are more divided than ever before, with views of life, politics and fate sharply divided both by partisan affiliation and educational level. The national catharsis that the New York Times declared his presidential victory to have achieved, the we as a people the president-elect claimed would work together toward a shared vision of a better future, were, its so painfully clear now, works of magical thinking that diverted us from the talk of watermelons on the campaign trail and the reality of a divided Congress that would immediately greet him. (MORE: Why Obama Will Never Call Out Racism) When the fantasy that the election of Barack Obama would recreate America ran aground, the rush to blame the president for having somehow bungled the job was immediate and fierce. He wasnt hopeful enough, passionate enough, true enough to the superhuman capacity to create a desirable, indeed, likeable us that had been so readily projected onto him. In the
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Election Year 2012: When The Reality Principle Trumps the Audacity of Hope | TIME Ideas | TIME.com

campaign, he held up a mirror to our better selves; in office, he showed us who we really were. He gave us notice. Gathering clouds and raging storms, were in store for the near future, he warned, right in his inauguration speech, and though it was easy to point overseas or to Wall Street for the causes of that sense of impending doom, the fact was, and no one was better positioned than Obama to know it, the most corrosive problems of his presidency would come from the peoples representatives who worked in the huge white cake of a building right behind him. 2008 was the year of the audacity of hope. This weeks rousing words were first incumbent outspent. The change in register says it all. Real life has trumped the sublime. MORE: Inside the Presidents Club
Warner, a former contributing columnist for the New York Times, is the author, most recently, of We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication. The views expressed are solely her own.

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