“The trouble with hello is goodbye,” thus says the song of the same title popularized by Shirley Bassey and Sergio Mendez in the mid-70s.
I remembered this beautiful song as I pondered on the eve of the mid-term election in the US, thinking how a campaign for change that raised the hopes of millions of Americans has turned into disappointment for many, thus raising the very distinct possibility of the Democrats, who rode the waves of change to victory in the presidential elections of 2008, being drowned by the backlash of the waves of disappointment.
President Barack Obama, whose constant calls for change rallied the young, the independents and the apolitical behind him and the Democrats, now face the prospect of losing control of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the loosening of his grip over the Senate.
In the presidential campaign of 2008, Obama and the Democrats only had to utter the magic word “change” and the crowds would erupt into cheers and applause. Now, the word seems to have lost its luster, with the President having to appeal to the American people, grown impatient by the prolonged economic crisis and angered by the unending political rumblings in Washington, to give him and his party more time to steer the ship back on its course, while continuing to blame former President George W. Bush and the Republicans for the current state of affairs.
In its October 14-17 surveys, the Gallup Poll reported that Obama’s job approval rating average of 44.7% for the seventh quarter of his presidency marked a new low, with a majority of those polled saying he does not deserve to be reelected.
But Obama can look back to recent history for relief. Both Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan reached their lowest job approval ratings in the middle of their first terms, resulting in heavy losses in the congressional and senatorial races for their respective parties. But both recovered fast enough to win reelection.
The troubles of Obama should serve as a reminder to Philippine President Noynoy Aquino, who rose to the presidency on the same message of hope and change, that he has to deliver on his promises, or at least show clear signs to the Filipino people that he is doing his best to institute the changes that he had promised.
Like Obama, he raised the bar high, and he has to show even in the early stages of his presidency that he can hurdle that bar. So far, he has not shown signs that he can bring about the change that the people expect from him.
Fortunately for Aquino, the Filipino people are not as impatient as the Americans for while Obama’s ratings have consistently dropped since he took office nearly two years ago, Aquino’s approval rating has remained in the high 70’s. But at the rate he and his Cabinet have been fumbling and making moves that make it look like the Philippine government is back to “business as usual,” it’s not difficult to imagine Aquino suffering the same image problem in the near future as Obama is facing now.
One thing going for Aquino, however, is the fact that the country does not have a strong political party system, and, therefore, does not have to worry much about the mid-term elections in 2013 when the people elect local officials and congressmen. All he has to do, as all presidents have done before him, is dangle the pork barrel before congressmen and public work funds before governors and mayors, and his Liberal Party will be much stronger than it had been in last May’s election.
And that’s what he has obviously been doing in the last few weeks. Instead of removing the pork barrel funds as he had promised, he has even increased the lawmakers’ allocations by at least P50 million each and has retained his own office’s P500-million pork barrel allocation.
He has not made any moves against jueteng, saying that it is not a priority in his administration. He stood his ground against the Catholic Church on the issue of family planning and birth control, but after a talk with the bishops, we are not hearing about condoms being distributed by the Department of Health anymore.
His officials have been accused of being “arrogant,” and he himself has been described as “too combative,” the same unfavorable traits that described his predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. And now, he is hinting that he would embark on more foreign trips after two successive visits to the US and Vietnam, this after he and his allies had criticized Arroyo for her numerous trips.
Just as Obama had raised high hopes and has failed to meet the Americans’ equally high expectations, Aquino is beginning to make Filipinos think “pareho lang pala.”
We acknowledge that it is still too early to judge Aquino, but he has to at least show us that we are beginning to take a new path so that the Filipino people would continue to hope for change.
The trouble with hello is goodbye. The trouble with hope is disappointment.