I’ve already predicted that Barack Obama will not become US president in January 2009. And that’s a tough thing to do, with Europe in the throes of Obamamania, and most of the pundits seeming to regard his election in November as a formality. However, I’m going to say it again. BARACK OBAMA WILL NOT BE INAUGURATED PRESIDENT IN 2009. If I’m wrong I’ll do a post mortem of my astrological reasoning, but I won’t be giving up astrology. Economists and meteorologists regularly mess up their predictions, without either losing their jobs or undermining their professional integrity. They usually don’t even get laughed at! Why are astrologers any different?
In the unlikely event that Barack Obama does get elected, he’ll be a one-termer and his time in office will go down as a major disappointment – he might even be competing with George Bush Junior and Jimmy Carter for title of worst post-war US president. Not because he’s incompetent, or otherwise unsuited for the presidency, but because his timing was plain wrong.
To understand Barack Obama’s poor timing, one has to understand the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. I keep banging on about this cycle, because of its massive cultural, economic and politic influence.
It’s a cycle that lasts twenty years – in other words there are twenty years between successive conjunctions. In recent history, the conjunctions have been particularly easy to follow, because they have taken place at the beginning of alternating decades: 1901, 1921, 1940-1941, 1961, 1980-1981, 2000, 2020.
The Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions represent new beginnings – the clearing out of the old, the planting of seeds. So all the optimism that surrounded the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961 was entirely appropriate. Likewise with Ronald Reagan, who was inaugurated a few weeks after the conjunction that took place on New Years Eve 1980. Not everyone liked him, but he had a powerful vision of the world, that was shared by Margaret Thatcher, who became British Prime Minster less than two years earlier, in 1979.
Roughly ten years after Jupiter and Saturn’s conjunction, they form an opposition, when they’re 180 degrees apart. It’s at this stage that the cycle goes into crisis, when there’s no longer any new material being produced, when one has to deal with the consequences of one’s actions. This 180 degree aspect often coincides with economic and political turmoil, with no immediate resolution.
The current Jupiter-Saturn cycle, which started in 2000, will go into crisis in a couple of years time, in 2010 and 2011, when the opposition hits home. And already, as we move towards this opposition, America and parts of Europe and Asia are starting to feel the cold winds of recession.
So, what’s this got to do with Barack Obama?
If Barack Obama becomes president in January 2009, he’d be running straight into the Jupiter-Saturn opposition. The full impact of the Bush presidency, which started soon after the 2000 conjunction, would be starting to manifest. Or put another way, it’s like boarding a train at the last station before it reaches its destination. You can’t change where it’s going, even if you’re the replacement train driver.
As president, Barack Obama would be dealing with the consequences not just of the Bush presidency, but also of the global events that had been unleashed by the 2000 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. It’s a train that’s going fast, that can’t change direction. And it’s pointless having brand new ideas, or hoping for something better – it’s not a time for new beginnings.
It might be helpful to go back into history, to other presidents elected at this stage in the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. George Bush Senior, Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, was elected to the presidency in 1988 – just before the 1989-1990 Jupiter-Saturn opposition. To a great extent he represented a continuation of Ronald Reagan. And his presidency saw the culmination of Reagan’s fight again Communism, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From a negative point of view there was a recession, that Reagan’s economic policies almost certainly contributed to. Put another way, the presidency of George Bush Senior added very little to that of his predecessor, and it certainly wasn’t inspirational.
Move back to the previous Jupiter-Saturn cycle, and the president elected at the same stage of the cycle we’re in now was Richard Nixon. Like George Bush Senior, Nixon’s message wasn’t inspirational – instead he wanted to role back the tide of ’sixties liberalism, arguably to return to the comfort and security of the 1950s.
It’s true that Nixon brought to an end an eight year Democrat presidency, in the same way that Obama is hoping to end an eight year Republican presidency. However Nixon was a reactionary, who also had a hawkish and interventionist foreign policy. There was certainly no fuzzy sentimentality as the Nixon government connived to bring down the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, to replace it with the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet.
Go back twenty years, to 1948, and Harry Truman won a second term. Nothing changed.
Back another Jupiter-Saturn cycle, to 1928, and we possibly get the biggest clue as to what might happen if Barack Obama gets elected in November. In 1928 Republican Herbert Hoover won the election. He was a talented politician, who did his best for his country. And like Obama, he was Leo. However his presidency ended in failure, largely because of the Great Depression, which started in the Autumn of 1929. Hoover had to deal with the consequences of everything that had been taking place since the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1921 – he was the train driver getting on board at the last station. And nothing Hoover did alleviated the crisis, at least in the popular perception.
Herbert Hoover was defeated in the 1932 election by Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1932 was the big year – the crisis was at a peak, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a low, and in some respects things could only get better. And because the cycle was past it’s opposition phase, someone with good ideas could come in and sort the problem out. We had a similar picture in 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected president. It’s suggested that Bill Clinton squandered his opportunity, but at least he had the opportunity.
As a point of interest, the presidential elections of 1912, 1932, 1952 and 1992 were all won by non-incumbents who went on to hold office for at least two terms – Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton. The exception to this pattern was Richard Nixon, who won a second term in 1972.
The next big year is 2012. This is when an inspirational politician like Barack Obama can be elected to a two-term presidency and be remembered as a saviour of the country and perhaps the world. In this sense, the 2012 presidential election probably had Barack Obama’s name on it, and he could have been the next FDR, or perhaps, on the international scene, Woodrow Wilson. Instead the best he can hope for is being another Herbert Hoover.
Though a more likely parallel is William Bryan, who lost to William Taft in the 1908 election. Bryan was a great orator, but because of Jupiter and Saturn’s configuration his liberal policies didn’t strike a cord with the American people. And those of Bryan’s policies that were palatable were stolen by his successful rival.
Barack Obama should have recognised all this. At the current stage in the Jupiter-Saturn cycle US presidential candidates who portray themselves as progressive and inspirational are unlikely to prosper, and if by some miracle they do reach the White House they’ll find it very difficult, and probably impossible, to deliver on their promises. A great shame.
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