The US Election and a Warning for Obama

It’s starting to seem a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will win this year’s Presidential election. Not because he has been spectacularly good, but because the Republicans haven’t got a candidate they can unite behind, and the primaries have started. Obama is not just a sitting President, he is also a superb showman, a vital quality in modern politics.

You can usually tell well in advance who is going to win an election: it’s the one with the charisma, the showmanship, the one who can make the crowds go woo! That was why George W Bush won 2 elections, and Bill Clinton, and Reagan, and Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi. I don’t know if France’s Sarkozy has enough of it: he tries a bit too hard to be sexy, and it doesn’t work like that. So he may not be re-elected. President Putin also tries a bit too hard, and he is looking set for a downfall.

A lot of people seemed not to agree that George Bush had charisma because they thought he was a bad lot. But charisma is not a virtue or a vice in itself: it is just an attractiveness that inspires a following. You didn’t need to like or agree with George Bush to see that he had the ability to connect emotionally with certain types of people. Making a folksy virtue of his own ignorance was part of that appeal. And that was why his father did not get a second term: he did not have what he called ‘the vision thing’. The same with Gordon Brown in the UK.

The outcome of leadership elections is often that simple. Sometimes substance wins the day, when there is enough of it. Angela Merkel of Germany has looked like one of them from the start.
__________________________________________________
Ad Break: I offer webcam astrology readings (£60 full reading/£30 update) and written responses to specific questions (£30). Price negotiable if you’re hard up. Contact me on Dharmaruci71(at)hotmail.com.
__________________________________________________

Click to Enlarge

In the 2008 US election, the North Node at 13 Aquarius had crossed Obama’s Ascendant 2 months earlier, and opposed his natal Node in March that year. In the 2012 election, the North Node in Scorpio will have crossed Obama’s MC and squared his natal Node 2 months earlier. So there is continuity of themes there, as well as in the Neptune transits: he was elected under Neptune conjoining his Ascendant, it went on to square his MC and is now in the early stages of squaring his Gemini Moon.

Click to Enlarge

What I have noticed with leaders is that they are usually elected under hard outer planet transits, and they stay in power until those transits end. Tony Blair, for example, won his first election in 1997 with Neptune conjoining his MC. Neptune went on to hard aspect his natal North Node and then his Moon-Sun-Pluto t-square. When it was done, Tony Blair left power. Neptune put him there and kept him there, just as Pluto put Margaret Thatcher there and kept her there till he’d finished transiting her chart.

Click to Enlarge

So Obama is likely to stay in power until Neptune has finished with him, which will be well into his second term. With the Nodal emphasis at the election shifting from his Asc to his MC, he will need to make his appeal less personal (Asc) and more based on his achievements in office (MC) to win the 2nd term, which is what you’d expect.

On a grimmer note, Obama will need to be careful from summer 2012 onwards as Uranus in Aries comes up to trine his Leo Sun. Presidents Kennedy, McKinley and Lincoln were all assassinated under Uranus transits to their Suns, as were Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Moreover, Obama was inaugurated under a Void Moon: as I showed in my piece on 21 Jan 2009 and then again on 29 Jan 2009, Void Moons have historically been associated with major disruption to the Presidency.

For this year, Uranus only comes to within 4 degrees of trining Obama’s Sun, so it is may be too soon to worry. On the other hand, with this Presidency being Void Moon, and with Uranus exactly squaring Pluto this year, we are likely to see extremism and major incidents that change the course of events in the world. I think it would be bad for the world if Obama was assassinated. I’m not predicting it, and it feels like bad taste to even say it. But it is astrologically possible over the next 2 years, so if there are any astrologers left in the White House, please take note!