by Robert W. McDonald

Created on: December 04, 2008

Is the national news media inadvertently setting up Barak Obama to be a failure? As absurd as that question may seem, there are enough reasons to suspect that such may eventually prove be the case.

First of all, the media has taken the position that President-elect Obama's election victory was a "peoples' mandate for change" and second in historical importance to only Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 landslide win. While this may indeed prove to be correct it is equally likely that' in the eyes of future historians, President Obama will be remembered as having gained the presidency by defeating one of the most mediocre opponents in electoral history. Should he be defeated in 2012, will President Obama then be seen as having "lost his mandate?"

Then there are the numerous references to similarities in the public's perception of President-elect Barak Obama and that of then-President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As of this writing at least two nationally-circulated news and opinion magazines, "Time" and "The New Yorker," have unmistakably caricatured the President-elect as FDR, complete with top hat and cigarette holder clinched in an exaggerated toothy smile.

To be sure, both Presidents-elect were, and are, charismatic and both inherited unsettled economic times from their predecessors in office. The similarities end there.

Say what you will about George Bush, the simple fact remains that he was no Herbert Hoover. In the two last years of his presidency Hoover obstinately refused to even consider increased government spending, in either the public or private sectors, as a means of recovery from what was then a recession. On the other hand, George W. has given his blessings to the greatest raid on a national treasury since the barbarians carted off what was left of Fifth-Century Rome. The frequent comparisons of 2009 to 1933 also fail in credibility.

On January 20, 2009 Barak Obama will inherit a nation of relative economic and social stability. Barring some disaster of literally epic consequences, the national unemployment rate will probably have stabilized at around 8% and there shouldn't be calls from both the political left and right for an armed insurrection. At high noon on March 4, 1933 Roosevelt was immediately saddled with an estimated 25% national unemployment rate, a banking industry that was in shambles, and what seemed to be a three-way race between the communists, the socialists, and veterans of World War I as to which group would be at the forefront of

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