by Richard Watkins

Created on: April 23, 2009

I know a lot of people who voted for Obama, and I don't know any that ever had high expectations of him, even from the start. Remember that Obama's campaign slogan was "Hope and Change", which is really pretty clever when you think about the difference between expectation and hope. People who have high expectations set themselves up for disappointment. Having expectations puts the way one feels about the outcome of something in someones elses control. If Obama had ran on the "Expect Change" ticket, then my guess is, Americans would have to lower their expectations, because so far he would have let them down. But, by using the word hope, it sort of prepared his voters to lower their expectations from the start, when it came to the outcome of changes. Hope is open to any outcome where expectation is closed. Personally, I think this was a very clever way for him to run for president. Had he used the terms expect change, people would have known he was lying.

For voters who voted for him based on expectations that he would come through with his campaign promises, I imagine many of them have lowered their expectations of him, and their approval of him. He has let down the American Armenians by doing the famous presidential g-word dance, when he was with Turkey's leader recently, and again on Genocide Remembrance day which was April 20th. He's gone back on his word when it came to bailing out bankers. But, I don't think most Americans put a lot of stock in the promises that a politician makes, we've learned a lot since Bush from both his administration and congress. All politicians lie. We know this. So, the fact that his approval ratings dropped considerably the first week of his presidency, were probably just due to the fact that no bells and whistles went off and the sky didn't rain coins. His approval ratings have remained stable at around 67 to 61 percent, since the 20 percent drop from 81 percent that first week.

Overall, I do think more Americans are beginning to realize that Obama's campaign should have been "false hope and change". False hopes are built around fantasy or extremely unlikely outcomes. Those of us who did not support Obama, saw his hopes as unattainable, impossible to reach or extremely unlikely. I talked to people during the campaign that supported him, and all of them would admit that change was going to be near impossible when so much damage control would be required. Those same people still support him even though they are not happy with his presidency so far. Why? Because they have hope. Hope can last him his whole presidency. Some still buy into the party politics and would support anything he did for that reason alone. When he does lose voter support, it won't be because of anything he did, since hope is personal. Voters will more likely put the blame on themselves when they realize their votes were based on false hope, not hope. "Hope and change" was a clever play on words.

Expecting that Obama would not be just another blank slate, mind controlled, bankers puppet is starting to seem like too much to hope for, for a few Americans; but until Obama does something that the world disapproves of, like takes us into another war we can't afford, Americans will continue to sit complacently and hope never expecting much one way or the other.

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