Great expectations | 29 October 2011

‘We chose to believe things that could not be true,’ says Velma Hart, the American finance officer who famously confronted President Obama at a town hall meeting in Washington DC and told him straight that she was tired of constantly having to defend him against his former supporters among the middle classes. She voted for Obama, believing that with him as President real change was possible in America, but since then she has become less sure of his ability to make any difference. Having just lost her job, her fears for the future have been realised. Would she vote for Obama again?

Hart was talking to Gary Younge, who reported on the Obama election campaign for the Guardian. He’s been wondering what happened to all that enthusiasm, all that belief, all that hope, and in the second of his two-part series Performance Notes on a Presidency on Sunday (produced by Peggy Sutton) he puzzled through the past couple of years, which have seen Obama’s popularity slide, his effectiveness as President dwindle.