Obama’s Tough Term: Political and Economic Risks Stare at the US

by A Commentator

Bushmaster guns have made it to the headlines after the recent heartbreaking shooting in a school in the United States. While the debate on gun ownership following the massacre was marked with outrage, what remained unchanged was the fact that ownership of weapons, especially guns, is part of the US heritage and culture and therefore a deep-rooted social issue. The roots of weaponries in the US culture are so deep that apart from gun shops and supershops even the average grocery buyers are gently prompted to the weapons by gun magazines that make brisk sales as they are one of the sleekest publications produced in the US. The culture of buying guns is similar to buying essentials for an average conservative-type US household and therefore cannot be dealt like petty crime.
Indeed it is a cultural value, dear to the conservatives in the United States.
But what would shock any sane human being is that the Bushmaster gun-makers indeed suggest through their website that potential buyers can order the dangerous weapon over the web and the gun maker can then ship it to the buyer’s home inside the US through a courier service. Ordering a gun has become like ordering the latest literary gems through Flipcart.

President Barack Obama, like millions of others in his country, wants to end the culture of shooting in the schools, but here too he has to deal with the handicap of being the greatest enemy of contemporary American conservatives. The coming year shall witness Obama move towards a new gun-control policy, but the way the conservatives have tangled all their issues with each other—even after the horrifying shooting of tiny toddlers—Obama’s moves may not be entirely free from political minefield as Obama is not perceived by the conservatives as the defender of American “values”.

It is another sign that for a country built on magnificent foundations, the current state of the United States of America is not appealing at all. As seen from the ground, the United States is the land of many fears and apparitions and symptoms abound of its troubled soul. The feeling that something is not quite right is just too obvious to be missed. Former Senator Gaby Gifford of Arizona was shot in the head during the highly heated discourse over the Tea Party conservatives in the US. She has recovered partially, but the mass psyche is far from healing as it absorbs battering from continuous gun violence.

Despite negative aspects, the usual US traits, the Saturday night partying, and the gentlemen’s clubs did their usual business. Young men still gambled with whatever little they could save. But far from the maddening crowds of New York and Washington D.C.’s late night-outs, a different US is unfolding.

The coming year will continue to be marked by the main problem of political attrition between the conservatives (read Republicans who are clueless about how to deal with the changing USA) and Obama. This will be in keeping with the mood of the nation launched during Obama versus Romney debates.

But the American reality, which has consi-derably changed, is best apparent just a little distance away from Washington D.C. in Baltimore. At one point in the US history, when the fight for equality and rights was on top of the North American nation’s agenda, Baltimore emerged as a key city of education and liberal ideas. It also emerged as a key centre for African-American culture. But the port of Baltimore has long gone moribund as its cranes occasionally stir up to work those once magnificent expanses. Crime is rampant and homes are boarded up in want of tenants. You have to take a MARC train (the state train of Maryland) to reach Washington D.C. in 30 minutes or less to understand how close the overarching darkness of the United States has come to embracing the heart of its power and politics. Certainly, even in these gloomy days when from the wisened immigrant taxi drivers to housewives, to students to professionals—all nod their heads helplessly—the old genius of the US shows off when an ageing matriarch of Baltimore thundered against the previous Administrations that failed to take the right steps to save the US economy from coming to this pass when its national debt equals its total size!

Despite Obama’s courting of conservative ideals like protecting the banking sector, the fight finally took off over Obama’s challenge to social conservatism. The liberals came around to support Obama for one more chance as Obama went radical on the social issues. Obama has not hidden his support for the reproductive rights of women. This marked him, a Christian by upbringing, a radical in the eyes of the social conservatives of the United States. Then in an exceptional move, Obama declared his support for the civil union of same-sex couples in a landmark TV interview on June 8, 2012, a few days after marking the first anniversary of the operation at Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. Obama had literally let the cat loose among the conservatives who believed the institution of marriage was holy and the act of birth of the human beings as essential to their understanding of the divine and the creation. Many suspected that Obama intensified the fight with the conservatives intentionally. But it was clear that the more the conservatives attacked Obama, the more the women voters drew close to him and those who really support social justice decided to support him once more.

The conservatives had not done any favour to Obama either and perhaps deserved every bit of Obama-tricks from the White House. To begin with, the likes of Donald Trump and rabble-rousing Dinesh D’Souza gave the impression that Obama was a fraudster—an impostor. Some of the stories about Obama ranged from conspiracy to anarchical variety. Then came the House of Representatives’ election which saw the school of Tea Party candidates in the Republican fold increase their number. The likes of Michele Bachmann became famous for their simply, earthy appeal to the folksy Yankees who had little idea of the world, and a head full of ideas about ‘Merica. The campaign once launched led to the Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission of 2010 which opined that the government could not ban independent political spending by corporations, unions, organisations of individuals in election and changed the rules in place. Following this verdict by the Supreme Court of the United States, a flood of Super PAC (Public Affairs Committees or campaign commi-ttees) zapped supporters and tried to snatch the President’s supporters away. In the coming months, and the rest of his term, Obama, the risk-taking social radical and a fiscally-challenged President, will have to work with the same conservatives who have been daggers drawn at the current Administration in the White House.

The hint of the acrimony between two sides was clear during the election months but remained barely concealed in the equally tough debates over tax and “fiscal cliff” in November–December. As a result of the divisions, US society appears along fundamental lines along pro-choice and pro-civil rights debates and barely seem to have a chance to work together.

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As Obama begins his second presidential tenure, risks for the American dream are just too huge to be invisible for the rest of the world, but perhaps like every US feature even a problem is not a problem unless it is a hulking giant of a problem. Surprising though is the fact that though President Obama remains mired at home in an intensely divided society, where the likes of Sean Hannity of Fox News have problem in the repeat-acceptance of the first Black President of the United States, a deeper analysis by more rigorous analysts have shown that Barack Obama has little difference in core areas of financial management. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in Freefall: “But almost surely, the failures of the Obama and Bush administrations will rank among the most costly mistakes of any modern democratic government at any time. In the United States, the magnitude of guarantees and bailouts approached 80 percent of US GDP, some $ 12 trillion.” So is Barack Obama, as his critics suggest, merely a Bush-‘Lite’? Someone reading Stiglitz and Niel Barofsky might actually see through that during his first term, Obama continued with the blind and unaccounted bailout of banks started by George W. Bush and in that context remained totally undifferentiated from the Bush policies.

The world however is yet to come to terms with the metamorphosis of Barack Obama in the seat of power since January 20, 2009. Perhaps the profile of Obama in power will be remembered for projecting a man who was isolated by the conservatives of his own country and and as a result went solo in the international affairs just to cut the legislative wing to size.

Obama’s change began soon after winning the election in November 2008. He had won the election but had to win over the security-obsessed bureaucracy. Sometime before his inauguration in January 2009, the CIA brought news that an obscure Somali group was planning to enter Washington D.C. to target Obama on the dais as he was sworn in. Such was the threat perception that Defence Secretary Robert Gates was specially designated to take over in case Obama and his wife Michelle were incapacitated in the attack. The world got to know about this event much later, but historians will forever have to note that Barack Obama’s worldview perhaps received a jolt even as he kept a hand on the holy book of Christianity and swore to his new office. Little wonder that in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize speech, Obama spoke of the ‘Just War’. The speech was evidently a sign of a different Obama evolving in office shaped by political attrition at home and unpredictable events abroad.

Obama, who had talked of radical measures like closing down of Guantanamo Bay’s detention centre, had no option but to proceed with his new-found sense of insecurity. He responded to this sense of insecurity by waging the third episode of the war on terror in Africa and Asia: the drone wars. In its essence, the drone war, as expressed by former Republican candidate Ron Paul, remains an expression of totalitarian tendencies as Obama has not consulted the legislative wing before launching these attacks. Obama has maintained the drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan and the extended ‘playstation’ operations event to Somalia. The total extent of the drone attacks will probably never be known as Obama remains unexamined by the legislative wing of the United States. Yet, Barack Obama has embraced this most unconventional form of trans-continental warfare egged on by an obscure, nearly anonymous, group of experts and security czars who are more comfortable with the national security state.

Barack Obama’s first term was shaped by unprecedented domestic discord that continues at a high pitch even at the time of writing this piece, and the unconventional, if not illegitimate, ‘kinetic’ (drone attacks) measures he adopted for security threats emanating from Af-Pak, Arab and Islamic lands in general.
But the worst possible conflict erupted around Obama inside the White House over access to the presidential ears in a display of personal problems that perhaps rages inside every office. The fight has lessons for the future of the Obama-Biden Administration as it starts from January 2013 onwards and shows that dilemma between pragmatism and idealism does not benefit US policy-making and at one point weighed down the re-election bid of Barack Obama in the latter part of 2012:
soon after the 2008 election, Obama contacted his friend Greg Craig to be the counsel for the White House. At the same time, Rahm Emanuel joined his team as the Chief of Staff. Obama got Craig to implement his chief human rights project right from his victorious campaign: closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. Emanuel, a hawkish ex-soldier who later on displayed glee during drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, saw Obama’s human rights goals as politically disastrous. As Craig pushed to close down the detention centre, Emanuel swooped and a bitter fight began inside the White House that braced Craig and Emanuel. As Emanuel sidelined Craig and unleashed black magic inside the White House, the dream of closing down the Gitmo was shattered and under a spell of Right-wing advisors, Obama became a champion of drone wars. The drama over why Gitmo was not closed has been narrated in detail in To Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency by Daniel Klaidman in a controversial book. To have a more successful second term, Obama will have to ensure a friction-free Administration. Apart from the clash between Craig and Emanuel, Klaidman has also narrated the big fights between chief advisor David Axelrod and US Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder accused Axelrod of interfering in the work of the Justice Department and came “chest-to-chest” at a moment of allout warfare. Discord under his command and discord at home will both be in focus as Obama takes off for his second term in office.

Issues like gun rights even after the latest shooting incident, reproductive rights, fiscal management, taxation, gay and lesbian rights are all embraced by the conservatives of various types to fight the Obama wave. As a result, the coming second term of the Obama Administration will witness a tough time irrespective of the urgency of issues and public demand for action.

Perhaps the United States needs to pause and think fresh about everything it has gone through so far. But the stakes are too high and the country is in the middle of the worst domestic fissure and a changing demography for the first time in a century. How the United States will deal with such big changes while tackling urgent issues in the middle of a political discord promises a treat for politics-watchers across the world. The United States is being challenged; hope it will live through it and come out stronger.