US Features

Obama at 50: hair is gray - like US political mood

By Peer Meinert Aug 3, 2011, 20:47 GMT

U.S. President Barack Obama eats lunch at the Good Stuff Eatery in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC, USA, 03 August 2011. EPA/ROGER L. WOLLENBERG / POOL

Washington - The United States narrowly escaped financial catastrophe this week. For weeks on end, government default loomed - and would have happened on Wednesday without much arm-twisting.

No wonder, then, that President Barack Obama's hair has started turning gray. And that stress was etched deeply in his face as he announced the compromise.

But as he turns 50 on Thursday, he still looks like a young man, especially compared with some of his even grayer counterparts from other countries.

One thing for sure - to the disappointment of his conservative critics, there is no longer any doubt about the time and place of his birth. That issue was driven by real estate mogul Donald Trump, who was toying with a presidential run and insisted that Obama had been born in Kenya.

Though the question had long since been answered through Obama's candidacy for the presidency, Trump and a group around him known as 'birthers' - people who doubted that Obama was in fact born in the US - for weeks put pressure on Obama to release the 'long' form of his birth certificate.

The matter was finally put to rest when the White House published the original birth certificate showing that Obama was born in the state of Hawaii on August 4, 1961, which made him eligible to hold the office of president.

Now as Obama approaches the half-century milestone, the media are are critiquing his looks. But it's not really news that his shortly cropped hair has a few gray strands. Insiders noticed changes soon after he took office in January 2009 at age 47.

'Well that didn't take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray,' a New York Times article cattily commented, showing side-by-side photos of Obama in 2007 without any gray, the other in 2009 with plenty.

All presidents go grayer while in office, but it has rarely happened as quickly.

Is the job wearing him out?

Only a few US presidents have dealt with such tough issues: ending two wars while grappling with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the highly explosive debt drama.

Mixed into the situation is a fundamentalist opposition that is throwing up every barrier they can to trip him up. Truly, no time for softies.

There is no doubt that the gray state of US affairs overtook Obama more quickly than expected. His 'yes we can' phase - a high-flying notion about changing the US and the world - lasted only a few months. Then the magic fizzled. The Obama phenomenon has meanwhile also come to mean that, in the polls at least, few other presidents had fallen so quickly into disfavour.

However, Obama's youthful image still generates enthusiasm around the world. At the recent G-8 Summit in Deauville, France, it took Obama's arrival to whip up crowds with outstretched hands after they had ignored the other leaders.

Obama's casual saunter can take an audience's breath away. Next to him, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicholas Sarkozy look older and sallow-skinned. Obama stays cool and mellow.

What other world leader plays basketball in his free time? Who writes children's books on the side and what other president causes a furor when pictured in swimming trunks?

The Obama phenomenon is hard to summarize. One thing for certain: he has not exactly found political fortune in his two-and-a-half years as the most powerful man in the world. Many things have gone awry: The economy is languishing; he was unable to keep his promise to close the tainted military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu threw a spanner in the works of his Middle East policy.

In recent days, he managed to clear the debt hurdle, but pundits were asking, 'At what price?' After Obama gave way on the need for revenue increases in the face of Republican intransigence, his own party charged he had capitulated to the radical fringe of the Republican Party.

In difficult moments, Obama has relied on his comedic talents. When the issue of his birth got on his nerves, he counterattacked with an 'official birth' video that humourously acknowledged his father's African roots.

Obama, son of a white American woman and a black Kenyan man, showed the video at the White House Correspondents' Association: It was the dramatic scene from the movie 'The Lion King,' when the elder lion, Mufasa, proudly presents his new born son, the cub Simba.