Americans Don’t Want The Truth: In US Election, He Who Lies Wins
Spiegel Commentary About US Election Campaign
Regardless which candidate wins the US presidential election on Tuesday, neither of them has been honest to the American people about the scale of the problems facing the country. But Americans have only themselves to blame. They prefer to be lied to rather than to face the truth.
Greying and weighed down by his first term in office, Barack Obama is barely recognizable as the beacon of hope he was in 2008. Back then he was the youthful symbol of change, and his words were full of promise. A year into his term, he still had that aura. In a television interview on Jan. 25, 2010, shortly after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he said he didn’t want to be a “small” president, which is how he saw even Democratic idol Bill Clinton, who at one point saw fit to fight for new school uniforms. Obama, by contrast, wanted to fundamentally change the country.
“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” he declared on that January day.
He still sounded like the president who had proclaimed in his inaugural address, that “the time has come to set aside childish things. … Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.”
Since then this courageous man has become more disheartened by the day. And his reforming spirit won’t return even if he wins a second term. The man on whom millions pinned their hopes has waged one of the least hopeful election campaigns in history. He has stooped to the “childish things” he had promised to eschew, by running bitterly negative spots about Mitt Romney’s wealth and shortcomings. He recently resorted to calling the Republican candidate a “bullshitter” — a decidedly unpresidential term.
The man who rescued America from George W. Bush has even adopted the tactics of the former president, who in 2004 won re-election by demonizing his challenger John Kerry rather than talking about his own controversial record. And Obama too has started avoiding the hard realities that America must face.