Obama Finds His Stride
Barack Obama has stepped off his pedestal and  started governing with a mixture of idealism and pragmatism. It has lost  a preacher, but the bitterly divided country has plenty of those.  Finally, 14 months into his term, America has the reform-minded  president it needs. Fourteen months after Barack Obama's inauguration, Americans finally  have a president. They have lost St. Barack, their world preacher.  His ascent was dazzling and that was part of the problem. His rise was  as unreal as the arrival of a savior, it was naïve but then Obama had  waged a naïve election campaign: We can change, I will give you a  government that heals.  That approach quickly failed, because the real world is never naïve.  Now the left in America says Obama has betrayed their and his own  ideals, has been too compromising and too soft, a professor in the White  House, a powerless man, a black Jimmy Carter. The right says he has  betrayed American principles and regards him as a communist, a waster of  taxpayers' money. That has weakened him. The Israeli government is  getting ready to ignore the troublesome president until he has been  voted out of office, Afghan President Hamid Karzai allows his guest of  honor -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- to rail against  America while US soldiers protect Kabul. But that too is likely to pass:  The real world isn't a caricature. These are the weeks of Obama's comeback. Following his apparition and  crucifixion, we're experiencing a process of secularization. The White  House is re-adjusting and finding its balance. Health care reform,  finally passed, looks set to provide 32 million citizens with health  insurance and represents a victory for Obama over the Washington  establishment that has been marred by congressional paralysis for years.   Obama continued his drive to fill important posts by presidential  decree, and then came the breakthrough in disarmament talks with Russia,  then he flew to Karzai. We're seeing a belated beginning for him.  An Aggressive, Divided Country  It's well known that there are two Americas. Franklin D. Roosevelt  was hated by millions, Kennedy was hated by the right, Nixon by the  left, Clinton by the right, Bush by the left. The US is an aggressive  country. Sometimes that makes it dynamic, sometimes destructive. The differences between Americans and Europeans are greater than many  Europeans think. To conservative Americans, the European consensus that  a strong government must help the weak is an encroachment on liberty.  For the American right, "solidarity" and "social" are provocative words. Obama tried to change this climate by preaching about duty and  responsibility, and achieved the opposite: paranoia. Conspiracy theories  and exaggeration swirled around the talk shows. Then there was the Tea  Party movement, and all the warnings about immigrants, big city  dwellers, intellectuals, climate researchers, anti-gun campaigners,  politicians, women and African Americans -- everyone who threatens basic  American values. The US is a complicated country undergoing a wave of demographic  change that will make it even more complicated. In elections to come,  white America will find it virtually impossible to beat African  Americans and Hispanic immigrants if those two blocks join forces. The  white middle class fears this change and is jumpy. Senators are spat at,  Sarah Palin advises citizens to "reload," militias are arming  themselves. The New York Times spoke of a "small-scale mimicry of  Kristallnacht." The depth of the abyss is unprecedented, and it's also unprecedented  that America's right no longer regards Obama as its president. "This  black guy's your president" -- such sentences are new.   Of course it's possible to govern in such a climate, but it won't be  smooth sailing. One of Obama's biggest mistakes has been to believe in  his messianic vision of a presidency that transcends party lines. He's  now governing with passion, strategically and with a cool head. Democracy doesn't require harmony, it doesn't even require consensus,  all it needs is a majority. Obama has stepped off his pedestal and it  looks as though he plans to go on implementing reforms in the almost  three years he has left. Left of the center, with a little idealism and a  dose of pragmatism if necessary. The country needs a reforming president, it already has enough  preachers. A lot has been lost in the abyss between the two Americas.(Spiegel-Online International/Alemania)