Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IDN
BY ERNEST COREA
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – Cool and collected “Nodrama Obama” received a dramatic snub from the voters of traditionally liberal Massachusetts at the approach of his second year in office.
On Jan. 19, the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration as the country’s first African-American president, they voted by a comfortable margin of 52-47 for a Republican to fill the Senate seat that fell vacant with the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democratic Party icon who held the seat for 47 years.
A Republican last held a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts in 1979: That was African-American Edward Brooke.
The new Republican Senator (former Massachusetts state senator) Scott Brown, defeated state Attorney General Martha Coakley who began her campaign with a double digit lead — then, apparently, “fell asleep at the wheel,” as did the rest of the Democratic Party, while Brown ran a dynamic, populist campaign across most of the state. He will face re-election in 2012, when what would have been Kennedy’s full term ends.
Republicans have already interpreted Coakley’s defeat as a repudiation of Obama’s political philosophy, his style of governance, and his domestic political agenda which includes health care reform.
Health care reform has developed into a surprisingly abrasive issue with millions of dollars spent on anti-reform activities.
An indication of what reform means to the health care industry was reflected in the “market.” Even before the counting of votes began, an anticipated victory by Brown, which could maim or kill reform in the U.S. Senate, sent the value of health insurance and pharmaceutical company shares shooting upwards.
The Democrats, meanwhile, as most losing parties do, formed themselves into the customary circular “firing squad,” with each involved group passing blame to the next.
The exception was Obama who said in a televised interview: “We were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people.” He took the blame for this lapse.
DEFEATS
The political soothsayers of doom have concluded that after three consecutive defeats of Democrats in New York, Virginia and Massachusetts, Obama is a “loser” who will have to be content with a single term presidency.
Only soothsayers, here or elsewhere, are willing to speak with such certainty about the future. Obama’s critics are correct, however, when they claim outright — and crow about it — that the implications of the election results from Massachusetts go well beyond the state’s borders.
Brown’s victory deprives the Democrats of the filibuster proof 60-vote group it had in the Senate. This will make it possible for legislation proposed or supported by Obama, as well as for the confirmation of his nominations for high office, to be indefinitely delayed.
The impact of the election result on the confirmation process was demonstrated on the morning after the election, when Obama’s nominee to head the Transport Security Administration (TSA), Erroll Southers, withdrew from consideration rather than face the prospect of his nomination being continuously in limbo.
Law enforcement experts consider Southers, a former FBI special agent, an excellent “fit” for the job. Progress on his nomination was, however, held up under a procedural privilege by South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint.
As for filibustering, it is a process by which a substantive vote can be indefinitely held up unless “cloture” is invoked and applied by a minimum of 60 Senators. Debate then ends and Senators move on to an up-or-down vote on the item under discussions. Brown has already indicated that his will be the 41st vote against “cloture” on endlessly debating health care reform.
Democrats will continue to have an 18-vote majority in the Senate, however, and they will need to use both their procedural skills and their capacity for principled compromise to move forward with transformative legislation to minimise and eventually eliminate the burdensome legacy President George W. Bush bestowed on Obama.
SUFFERING
The burden of that disastrous legacy was that Obama had to assume leadership of a superpower that was suffering at home and distrusted abroad.
Unemployment was increasing, with heart-rending repercussions in myriad homes across the country. The U.S. Labour Department reported that 524,000 jobs were lost in December 2008 and 1.9 million in the year’s final four months, taking the year’s total job losses to 2.6 million, the highest annual job-loss total since 1945, the year in which World War II ended.
The unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in December 2008 from 6.7 percent in November, with many economists forecasting that it would rise in 2009 to 10 percent — which it did.
Housing sales were down, foreclosures were up, the banking system faced the possibility of a meltdown, credit was tightening, small businesses were threatened, key industries were imperiled and, overall, GDP was contracting.
On top of that, there were two wars to complete, and enemies to confront. In human terms, the impact on thousands of lives was staggering.
Urgent and far-reaching correctives were required to turn the situation around. Corrosive practices of the past eight years needed to be replaced with others that would substitute hope for despair. All this had to be done as swiftly as time, prudence, and the constitutional process of checks and balances would permit.
PROTECT
Obama’s economic team launched a major effort to protect the “commanding heights” of the economy because if these collapsed so would the entire economy with horrendous national and international repercussions.
So the banks were assisted to stay afloat, as was the automobile industry, even while unemployment rose and underemployment was common. The net result was that a perception grew of Obama and his elitist economic advisers being in bed with big business and its associated cohorts, while ignoring the “little guys” who were suffering.
A comedian on a late night television program captured a prevailing view when he said: “Obama is turning out to be one of the ablest Republican presidents we have known.”
To be sure, the benefits of a stimulus package designed by the Obama team were meant to support job creation, provide tax cuts to some 95 percent of the country’s workers and their families, bring down mortgage rates and help to prevent foreclosures, support education by providing funds to prevent layoff in schools, encourage the long overdue switch to clean energy by financing research, support the development of an improved electric grid, and accelerate action on the next generation of electric vehicles.
Many of these expectations were fulfilled but their effect was minuscule compared with the scale of the problems to be overcome.
The same caveat applies to Obama’s legislative record in his first year, which is considered impressive in many areas. He made it possible for states to extend unemployment benefits to 3.1 million unemployed people, and authorized health insurance for 4 million children who were without coverage. He signed into law the Edward M. Kennedy Service America Act that provides for the expansion of voluntary national service, and signed off on a law that will help women to fight against unequal pay.
In foreign policy, he has spent much of his time crafting and "showcasing" a new American attitude, both in substance and style. In different and differing geographic regions, he has demonstrated that this is a new day in which relations with nations big and small will be based on mutual interests and mutual respect.
He has banned torture by American interrogators. He has declassified and released documents that show how torture became an instrument of policy. He has ordered the closure of the infamous Guantanamo prison.
Unfortunately, none of these measures went far enough, fast enough, and some of them have faltered, including the decision to end incarceration without trial at Guantanamo.
POSITIVE
Mid-term elections are due in November and, customarily, the ruling group fares badly, with control of the Houses of Congress sometimes changing hands. This is the “nightmare” that must haunt Obama as he contemplates the rest of his second year.
He can continue to draw on the personal esteem in which he is held, but faces uncertainty about the policies that were, in fact, endorsed when he was elected. A NBC/WSJ (Wall Street Journal) poll conducted earlier this month showed that:
– Obama is personally liked by 75 percent, and 52 percent have a positive view of him, compared with 35 percent who have a negative one.
– He receives high scores for being “easy-going and likeable (a combined 72 percent), being inspirational and exciting (59 percent), having strong leadership qualities (57 percent), being honest and straightforward (51 percent) and representing traditional American values (51 percent).”
– He receives lower ratings, however, on discrete aspects of his day-to-day responsibilities: “being a firm and decisive decision-maker (49 percent), being a good commander in chief (49 percent), being knowledgeable and experienced (47 percent), uniting the country (40 percent), achieving his goals (40 percent), sharing Americans’ positions on the issues (38 percent), and changing ‘business as usual’ in Washington (30 percent).”
– The poll found, as well, that “only 35 percent are confident that Obama has the right set of goals and policies, and 54 percent believe he has accomplished ‘very little’ or ‘only some’ of his first-year in office goals, versus 45 percent who think he’s accomplished ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’.”
– Another poll (Washington Post/ABC News) found that he had a 55 percent approval rating (with 42 percent disapproving) for the way he is handling the “threat of terrorism,” an issue of continuing concern.
CHALLENGE
Obama gets his first chance in his “new” year to speak to a mass audience on Jan. 27 when he delivers the president’s annual State of the Union address at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress.
He faces major challenges as he prepares for this event: pushing back against the Massachusetts snub, reassuring the most nervous among his party’s senators and congressmen, saying nothing that would be used against the Democratic Party at the mid-term elections, winning back those sections of his base that are unhappy with the “status quo,” and reaching out to moderates among his critics and opponents in the interests of the bipartisanship he craves.
Will he be all contrite and demand forgiveness for a year’s “missed opportunities” or will he come out fighting?
Voters from some of the constituencies that worked hard to install him in office stayed home during the Massachusetts election. How can he energise them and give them the assurance that he will fight for what they thought he and they believed in?
A single “State of the Union” won’t satisfy everybody but he gave his supporters and opponents advance warning of how he plans to spend the rest of his presidency when he announced at the White House on Jan. 21 that he would soon be sending the Houses of Congress new legislation to restrict the types of trading, risk-taking and, overall, business operations that the world’s largest banks can pursue.
“We should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers,” Obama said.
Strong opposition from the Republicans in Congress and outside as well as from the financial industry is expected. An administration source said that Obama was ready for the fight and that his critics would have to choose between supporting the financial industry or its customers — the people.
If the banking legislation is a sign to go by, he plans a forceful second year in which he will be guided by the policies he pursued on the campaign trail, and will be loyal to the people whose hopes he aroused by doing so.
Could be an interesting year. (IDN-InDepthNews/22.01.2010)
Copyright © 2009 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters
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The writer has served as Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and the USA. He was Chairman of the Commonwealth Select Committee on the media and development, Editor of the Ceylon ‘Daily News’ and the Ceylon ‘Observer’, and was for a time Features Editor and Foreign Affairs columnist of the Singapore ‘Straits Times’. He is on the IDN editorial board.
