As an astrologer I try to look at the big picture – the bigger cycles are more important than individual horoscopes. It was with this approach that I tried to make sense of the 2008 US Presidential Election. We are less than halfway through the twenty-year Jupiter-Saturn cycle, that started in the year 2000.
It’s not a time for radical reformers to become president – we are instead talking about a continuation candidate, a person whose four-year term would be largely determined by the actions and consequences of the previous administration. Barack Obama just didn’t fit the bill, unless many of his supporters had got him completely wrong.
From the perspective of a left-wing liberal, it should have been clear that John McCain was a more suitable candidate than Barack Obama. McCain would have done his best to sort the country out, would have failed and would have paved the way for a radical, Democrat candidate to win the 2012 election, a Twenty-First Century Franklin D. Roosevelt. Maybe this candidate would have been Barack Obama, if he’s been allowed to run again, or Hillary Clinton or perhaps someone that most of us haven’t heard of.
Yet Barack Obama won. In retrospect he had such a brilliant horoscope that nothing could stop him, and his run for the White House coincided with a period of extraordinary luck. However we have to consider the implications.
In the Twentieth Century, only once, at this stage of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle, has an incumbent’s party been defeated in a Presidential election. That was in the 1968 Presidential election, when Republican Richard Nixon was the winner, taking over the White House from Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. Nixon was obviously not a radical, and he offered conservative America a bit of normality, after the supposed liberalism that dominated the 1960s. And in terms of Vietnam, Nixon had no choice but to continue his predecessor’s policies.
Barack Obama, elected to the White House forty years later, is arguably Richard Nixon turned upside down. Some think he’s a radical, but he almost certainly isn’t. He even had Rick Warren do the invocation at the inauguration ceremony – a pastor whose views on creationism and homosexuality aren’t to every liberal’s taste. And in the run up to his inauguration, Barack Obama has been distinctly middle of the road, even re-appointing George Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates.
Like Richard Nixon, Obama is offering a return to normality – after the conservative excesses of the Bush-Cheney administration. Yet he can’t escape from Bush’s shadow. He will, to an extent, have to continue with Bush’s policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and he’ll also have to grapple with the credit crunch and its aftermath.
Barack Obama’s first term in office is unlikely to be very successful. Not only will he be weighed down by the legacy of this predecessor, but at the end of March 2009 his luck will begin to run out. His dynamism and charisma will start fading at the edges, and he might feel an increasing powerlessness.
Much has been said about the risk to Obama of assassination, and if one has to highlight a period of maximum danger I would go for the period from April 13 2009 to June 4 2009, though a wider period from March 24 2009 to February 28 2010 should be considered.
However I don’t want to overstate the risks. Obama will be more vulnerable than usual, but in all probability he’ll be just fine. Though if someone does make a serious attempt to assassinate him, I doubt very much whether the assailant will come from the extreme right. It’s far more likely to be an ex-supporter, who feels utterly betrayed.
Obama’s luck, which starts deserting him from March 2009 onwards, doesn’t properly return until July 24 2012. So really, we can write off his first term. I doubt there’s much he can achieve, and I suspect that he’ll be largely reliant on other people. Perhaps he should take a a three year vacation? Well, I suppose he has to learn how to do the job, and watch other people make mistakes. He also has to get to grips with Middle Eastern politics, which will be every bit as treacherous as it was under George Bush Junior.
I believe that by the Summer of 2012 Obama’s prospects will be in tatters, and the Republicans will be hot favourites to retake the White House. Then something happens. On July 24 2012, according to Hindu astrology, Obama moves into a nineteen years period, lasting until 2031, that’s ruled by Saturn. He might, at this stage, decide that he wants to quit politics, but I don’t think that’ll be the right thing to do. Saturn is the strongest planet in his horoscope, and the engine of his success will change. It will no longer be about making the right contacts, it’ll instead be about his own leadership abilities.
So from July 2012 onwards Obama can be his own man, and he won’t be reliant on other people. We’re likely to see a lot of his key staff getting replaced, and his poll ratings will rapidly improve – and like Richard Nixon in 1972, he’ll win a second term.
Obama’s second term as president will be nothing like his first. During his first term few things will go right, and he’ll hardly be in control. In his second term he’ll be much more a typical Leo – being very definite about what he wants, and in certain cases being autocratic. And I suspect that like Richard Nixon, he’ll try to rule America directly, doing his level best to bypass Congress.
If Obama can make it to his second term, which I think is very likely, then I’m convinced that he’ll go down in history as one of the better presidents – the kind of president that Richard Nixon might have been, if it hadn’t been for Watergate. He won’t be a radical, and he won’t even be much of a reformer, but he’ll make America stronger, both economically and politically.
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It certainly seems that the general public and media are setting up Obama to do no wrong. He is adored and revered beyond all logic. To look at his situation now, it seems utterly impossible that by March 2009 he could fall out of favor. Perhaps the enormous devotion and gushing foreshadows his “great fall” with popularity taking a nose dive? However, I have to agree with some of the conservatives in the media, that it appears Obama has been annointed as the Second Coming…
Susan, it takes time and distance to brake a speeding train! I said that Obama’s luck will start to run out at the end of March. I doubt that his poll ratings will fall off a wall in one fell swoop. Rather over the spring and early summer the shine will leave his presidency. He’ll be attracting negative events, and we’ll see an escalating collapse. So if everything’s fine with Obama on April 1st, don’t call me a fool!
I’m positively fascinated to watch how this all unfolds. Of course you are right, change in poll ratings are typically gradual, rather than one fell swoop. A speeding train this is! From your web site it appears that, not only are you not a “fool” on April Fools, you are also nobodies’ fool!
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