WHOEVER wins Glenrothes this week will win narrowly. But the losers will lose big. That's the trouble with building great expectations in politics. They bring either glory or disillusionment.
This is why Barack Obama is said to be lowering expectations before he claims the White House. Imagine the mood in America if Obama loses. And what will Glenrothes mean for Scottish and UK politics when the victor is announced two days later, after w
hat has been probably the hardest fought by-election of modern times?
Expectations are a curse for politicians. Too often they build optimism only to spread disillusionment. If Labour's hopes are dashed on Thursday then Gordon Brown's credit crunch bounce will probably disappear again. He could find himself losing the significant gains he has made in the polls since the economic tsunami. Failure would hugely disappoint the SNP – those wild expectations again – but hardly reverse the course of Scottish politics.
I have just sacrificed half an hour of my life watching that famous multi-million dollar Obama 'infomercial' – I know it's sad, but that's what political anoraks must do – and found it a sophisticated and forceful message expressing hope and expectation, spoiled only by the usual American schmaltz. Bet it works, though.
If by some unforeseen electoral freak Obama loses after obliterating the dog days of the Republican campaign his defeat will pulverise US politics and destroy the heady expectations of millions.
No one since John F Kennedy has commanded such style and even adoration. Obama's near messianic attraction has swept him to the portal of the White House and if he should fail now the disillusionment among Democrats would cause a firestorm of anger in the US and great disappointment around the world.
But if he wins, the hopes of America, that most optimistic of nations, will soar again and Obama will have to start living up to his promises. He has set himself one mountainous task, which is why his campaign team is reportedly embarrassed by the level of expectation among voters and quietly playing down talk of coming political miracles as recession looms.
Most great leaders go unheralded until they have spent years in office. Obama seems to be reversing the process, rather as Tony Blair did when he swept to power in 1997 in almost unprecedented national expectation.
John F Kennedy was not recognised as a great politician until well after he had won the presidency with his inherited money by defeating Richard Nixon by a whisker. But his stock grew with desegregation and the Cuban missile crisis and his apotheosis came after his assassination. Little was expected of Ronald Reagan, the most popular president since, yet he survived without discernible substance but bags of style.
Few spotted the potential of Margaret Thatcher until she unleashed her obsessive self-determination on cowering Cabinets and, for better and worse, changed Britain for ever. Arguably the greatest disappointment after feverish expectation was Tony Blair.
When Britain turfed out John Major's shambolic Tories and handed Blair the biggest Labour majority ever, the nation expected a political revolution. Instead it got Blair's astonishing talent for style over substance and a dud opposition. This was enough to sustain him for a decade until the expectations were finally crushed by his terrible mistake on Iraq and he joined the other failures, pushed from office, just like Thatcher.
Some politicians are never the same after their expectations are dashed. Neil Kinnock was famously shattered when he saved Labour from self-destruction only to be unexpectedly spurned by the voters in 1992. He joked to me once about his mid-life political crisis but you could tell that he was heartbroken.
Alex Salmond has surpassed expectations. Having dislodged a political monolith he has governed with record approval ratings, something we're not used to in Scotland. Only in the past few weeks has his serenity been ruffled for the first time – and that by events that were none of his doing. A month ago the SNP were being hailed as certainties for Glenrothes but, although still narrow favourites, they have a real fight on their hands.
Victory for Labour would permit them to boast a reversal in fortune. And they would be entitled to say so because only a couple of weeks ago they had given up all hope. Labour have much more at stake in Glenrothes than the SNP because this, remember, is supposed to be a rock solid Labour seat, stronger for many reasons than Glasgow East, despite the smaller swing the Nationalists require.
Glenrothes matters less to the SNP because coming a close second would still be a creditable result. But a creditable result is politician-speak for failure. So high have been the Nationalists' expectations that a defeat, even a narrow one, would hurt. Yet it would be just another near miss for the Nats who are experienced at being knocked over only to put up their fists again for the next time.
A Labour win would see Brown claiming Salmond's honeymoon was over at long last. It would not be the whole truth, of course, but that doesn't matter. This is politics. Perception is everything and a defeat for the SNP would be interpreted by Salmond's opponents and the media as a major failure.
In this exciting political week in America and Scotland it must be good to be a Democrat but marginally better to be Alex Salmond than Gordon Brown.
The full article contains 911 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
