Obama’s dilemma

S P SETH

The sad state of the US politics was on display during the recent mid-term congressional elections where some Republican ads seemingly accused President Obama of ‘importing’ Ebola patients into the US, and making plans to bring terrorists into the country. A Republican National Committee ad reportedly urged people to vote Republican “to keep terrorists off US soil.” In other words, there is an attempt to personalize America’s problems to Obama’s stewardship of the US during the last six years.  At around 40 per cent Obama’s popularity is said to be just above George Bush who started the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and presided over the worst financial crisis since the thirties’ depression. Obama is being reviled in some political circles as having started or aggravated all the problems that the US is beset with. His plan to stop the deportation of around 5 million ‘illegal’ immigrants, mostly Latinos, by executive action will further aggravate the turf war between the Republican- majority congress and Obama presidency. Indeed, there are some suggestions that they might even impeach him.

Why is Obama so unpopular? There are a number of reasons. When Obama became the US President after winning the 2008 election, an American satirical online magazine ran the headline: Black man given the worst job in the world. Like most satirical quips, there was enough truth in it. At the time of Obama’s election to the presidency, the US was facing tough times. The country had entered serious recession, dragging much of the world into it. At the same time, it was bogged down in two wars, which seemed to be going nowhere. The country was looking for someone, without political baggage, to pull the US out of quagmire. Obama was untainted with the wars that were going on and neither was he part of the money machine that had increasingly come to micro-manage US politics. Indeed, he had voted against the Iraq war which Hillary Clinton, his strongest rival for Democratic Party nomination, had enthusiastically embraced. Both in terms of raising money for his election and popular mobilization, Obama and his campaign made skillful use of the Internet. Obama was thus emerging as the new leader to manage difficult times in unconventional ways. And on the way he sought to emerge as the black man transcending racial divide to become a healer in all sorts of ways for his troubled country that needed healing badly. Many Americans saw hope in him and he raised their hopes.

But many Republicans didn’t trust him, so much so that that they didn’t even believe that he was born in the USA, thus casting doubts on his legitimacy as the country’s new president. Some polls, according to the New York columnist Nicholas Kristof, have shown that more than a third in the Republican Party said that he was born abroad and about one-fifth suspected that he could be the antichrist. Despite all this, his election was a historic milestone as the United States’ first black president. However, as Kristof pointed out in his column, many white voters could never come around to accepting such a momentous political change. With his presidency perceived to be lack luster or even failing, the number of white voters disillusioned with him only went up by the time of the 2012 election. As Obama told David Remnick of the New Yorker, “There is no doubt that there’s some folks who just dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.” In other words, Obama’s race has been quite a daunting factor in his increasing unpopularity. Which only tends to magnify his perceived failure to deliver. His race has also contributed to the sort of ideological rigidity that has marked American politics since Obama became the country’s President. The rise of the Tea Party is a clear example of it. Alan Abramowitz of Emory University is said to have argued persuasively that the Tea Party is a product of growing racial and ideological polarization within the electorate.

Obama might not have done wonders as President but his record on balance is good. Let us take the US economy. When he became President, the US economy was in free fall and facing the toughest recession since the thirties’ depression. It is still not performing brilliantly but the unemployment rate of about 6 per cent (from 10 per cent in 2009) and the current annualized GDP growth rate of around 4 per cent are nothing to scoff at, considering that Europe is still languishing.  But the US economy is still not out of the woods. The problem is three-fold. The first is the low level of wages that have stagnated for now several decades.  According to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, “Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level of a quarter-century ago.” Which means that most working and lower middle class people do not have much to spend on, apart from coping with the basics of life. Secondly and interconnected with the first, is the growing income inequality between the top 10 per cent and people at the low and middle level. In any case, GDP growth is not a true indicator of the economic situation of people at large. To quote Stiglitz, “Regardless of how fast GDP grows, an economic system that fails to deliver gains for most of its citizens, and in which a rising share of the population faces increasing insecurity, is in a fundamental sense, a failed economic system.”

And add to this the political gridlock in America, likely to get even worse following the mid-term elections with the Republican Party controlling the congress, things are not looking good. But to blame Obama for the systemic problems of economic and political governability is a bit of a stretch. When he won the 2008 elections, he was hoping to create a national consensus transcending party and racial/ethnic divisions for a new America. That hope was soon dashed because the Republican Party was determined not to legitimize the Obama experiment. Which is not to suggest that Obama’s initiatives in domestic policy, as well as in foreign and defence affairs, were beyond reproach. The point to make here is that a very significant part of the American political establishment, strongly entrenched in the congress, was determined to block his initiatives and policies, and the resultant gridlock has created a crisis of governability in the US. They even went to the extent of shutting down the federal government.  In the process American people are increasingly becoming disenchanted and withdrawn from their political institutions, both the congress and the presidency. With the best will in the world, Obama wouldn’t be able to resolve this crisis of governability.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au