John Humphrys asks: will Obama get re-elected as president or kicked out of the White House next week?
Acts of God don’t come much more dramatic than Hurricane Sandy. And when they are visited upon the Earth on the eve of an American presidential election it is not fanciful to imagine that the Almighty may be trying to tell us something. Does He have a preference over whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney should rule the world’s most powerful country for the next four years? If so, which is it? And should we, spared such devastation on this side of the Atlantic, care who wins next Tuesday?
The 2012 presidential election looks set to be as close the election of 2000 when we still didn’t know weeks after the polls had closed who had actually won and it was left to the Supreme Court to decide on the arcane matter of hanging chads in Florida whether George W Bush or Al Gore was to be the new president. This time the polls are showing a dead heat. And in the ten or so swing states that will determine the final outcome, the result is still too close to call. It will be a tense night in Washington next Tuesday.
It shouldn’t really be like this for a president seeking re-election. Usually American presidents manage to get themselves a second term if they want one. In recent history George W Bush did so, and before him Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan easily got re-elected. Only Bush’s father, George Senior, and Jimmy Carter have been kicked out of the White House against their wishes in the last thirty five years. Is the same going to happen to Obama?
If the election of 1992 is anything to go by, it may well. Then, the team running challenger Bill Clinton’s campaign famously defined the key issue as ‘the economy, stupid’. Now it is the same. After the near collapse of the world financial system in 2008, the newly-elected Barack Obama was always going to face an immensely difficult economic situation. He has presided over, first, a recession and now only a very lukewarm recovery. Unemployment remains high and many Americans are enduring a pretty tough time. This is hardly ideal for a politician saying “give me four more years, please”.
As one seasoned political commentator has put it, the American people are looking for a safe way to sack their president. For it is not just on the economy that he has disappointed them. Their disaffection with him is all the greater because four years ago he campaigned under the uplifting slogan: ‘Yes we can!’ But his critics say that those four years have shown that no, he couldn’t.
He came into office promising to usher in a new era of bipartisanship and cooperation with his political opponents. But the ‘two sides of the aisle’, as the two political parties are called in Congress, have never been more at each other’s throats, never more unwilling to do deals in the country’s interest. This may not be wholly or even mainly President Obama’s fault, but it was he who promised things would be different. The result is that on many issues, notably on setting the budget and preventing the American economy from falling into a ‘fiscal abyss’ as a result of failure to reach agreements, effective government has all but stalled.
On foreign policy too, the President’s record falls far short of what was hoped for. In the Middle East, in particular, he led the world to expect the opening of a new chapter in relations between the United States and the Arab world after the debacle of Iraq. Instead, the President’s critics accuse him of failing to stand up to Israel and capitalising on the opportunities offered by the Arab spring. Relations with both Russia and China are not good.
Such a record ought to make Obama a sure-fire loser, like Jimmy Carter in 1980. But he isn’t: he might well still win. That’s in part because, according to his defenders, his record is nothing like as bad as it is painted. The economy may not be in great shape but it could be a lot worse and it is the President’s own actions that have prevented it from being so. It was he, they say, who gave the fiscal boost to the economy that prevented demand from crashing altogether. And specific measures, such as his aid to the car industry, have not only saved thousands of jobs but have actually paid off: General Motors is now doing fine.
Furthermore, his supporters point out, President Obama has finally given America a decent healthcare system. And it was under his watch that Osama bin Laden was ultimately hunted down and killed.
The other reason Barack Obama may be doing better than expected is that for American voters the issue is not just about seizing an opportunity to sack a president; it’s also about electing another one. And the alternative makes many of them pause.
For some the reason they hesitate is because they think he is a bit strange, by which they mean he is a Mormon. No Mormon has ever risen so high as to be president of the United States and although Mormonism is a home-grown American religion, many Americans look at it askance. Others look askance at Romney himself for other reasons.
Some worry that he has had to pander so much to the far right and to Christian fundamentalists that he may well be their prisoner. Others say he has flip-flopped so much in order to get where he’s got that they simply don’t know what he stands for. On healthcare, for example, he introduced a scheme for Massachusetts when he was its governor, not at all unlike the one President Obama has brought in for the whole of America, yet he opposes it.
Romney’s supporters, though, argue that the chief reason to vote for him is that he knows what to do to revive the economy. This, they say, is because he has huge experience of running a business and so knows how the economy works. For others, however, it is this very business experience that puts them off. He made himself exceedingly rich by running a private equity firm but did so, they allege, by ruthless means. They accuse him of not coming clean about how much tax he has paid and of being out-of-touch with the lives of ordinary Americans. His economic policy of tax cuts and increases in spending on defence could plunge the economy back into trouble by increasing the size of the government deficit even more, they say.
On foreign policy, he says he will make America stand up for itself far more robustly but his critics say his hawkishness could prove very dangerous, notably if he were to take military action against Iran.
Does the outcome of the election matter to us? All British governments say (because they have to) that they will work cooperatively with whomever the American people choose as their leader. The so-called ‘special relationship’ will endure whatever. But the election of a president does change things. When Tony Blair found himself having to deal with George W Bush after having enjoyed a close relationship with Bill Clinton many people thought there would be tensions and difficulties. In fact, they got on like a house on fire. Too much so, some said: the result was Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq.
The coalition government has been more circumspect about its willingness to go along with whatever Washington might want, letting the Obama administration know it should not take for granted British cooperation in any military action against Iran, for example. Whether it would be so willing to stand up to a more gung-ho Romney government remains to be seen. In the end though, we and our government will get who we get in the White House.
As for the Almighty’s choice, who can tell? On the face of it, Hurricane Sandy would appear to help Barack Obama, giving him an ideal opportunity to appear presidential and activist and reminding floating voters, attentive to Mitt Romney’s case that there is too much government, that there are times when government is a good thing and necessary. But if that is what the divine message is, we won’t know until Tuesday night whether He has indeed swung it for Obama.
What’s your view?
- Who do you want to win?
- And why?
Let us know what you think.
