President Barack Obama is renowned for his rhetorical talent, and perhaps his speech against the Iraq war in the Democratic Convention on 27/7/2004 can be credited with placing Obama on the road to the White House four years later. As an observer, I can fairly say that the president is much more than a skilled orator. He means what he says and he has good intentions. However, two years after taking office, his achievements have been limited. I used to think that I have come to this conclusion on account of my disappointment with the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel, and President Obama's role in this process. However, I read a few days ago that some of the president's supporters in the United States gave him a C grade at most, or 70 over 100, for his performance, and their verdict was certainly not influenced by what he did or did not achieve in the Middle East. I believe that any objective judgment of Barack Obama's performance, as a president, must take into account the almost impossible task he had inherited from George W. Bush, in terms of the lost wars, a collapsed economy, and the blatant worldwide anti-Americanism that is not exclusive to Arabs and Muslims. President Obama was once again spot-on when he said in Ohio a few days ago, “The biggest mistake we could make right now is to go back to the very same policies that caused all this hurt in the first place”. The president, who was accompanied by his wife, was speaking at the start of his tour to support Democratic candidates in the midterm elections. But I felt that he was less convincing when he said “Don't let them tell you that change isn't possible", in a reference to his own campaign slogan. The president's tour coincided with Sarah Palin's tour, which started this week, in support of the candidates of the Tea Party, or the right wing of the Republican Party. Palin is not a candidate in the midterm elections, and she has not announced that she is running in the next presidential elections. Her fame comes from the fact that she was a mayor in Alaska and then its governor for two years before she resigned, and the fact that she was John McCain's vice-presidential candidate in the 2008 elections. As the reader can draw from the above, Sarah Palin has a limited political experience. In the presidential election campaign, she made several mistakes that ranged between being blatantly outrageous and plainly comical, and she became the subject of people's ridicule. Yet, she is now the most famous and most popular politician in the Republican Party, for reasons that, I admit, are completely mysterious to me, perhaps because I am a simpleton from the third world who cannot understand the intricate politics of the most powerful country in the world. Palin's tour will take place over two weeks and will include 19 states, ending on the eve of the midterm elections on the first Tuesday of November. I have noticed that Palin began her tour in Reno, Nevada, where the Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle is competing with Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Majority leader. Palin has endorsed several women candidates across the country, and Angle is a clear, but not necessarily “good”, example of these candidates. Although she is ignorant, she has raised millions of dollars for her campaign, even as she repeats ridiculous allegations such as her criticism of allowing sharia law in Dearborn, Michigan and Frankford, Texas. Thankfully, there was someone who reminded her that there are Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn who strictly observe their religious laws, and that American Catholics are opposed to divorce and abortion, and want to change American laws that allow them. I have already written about Palin's candidates, so will avoid repetition today. Nevertheless, I want to add here that her candidate for the Senate in the state of Delaware, Christine O'Donnell, appeared in an ad wearing a black dress and pearls, and proclaimed, “I'm not a witch”, knowing that witch has a pejorative meaning in English. If the U.S midterm elections were shaped by experience, skill, intellect and personal track records, the Tea Party women candidates would have never even won a seat in a small town council. However, the cornerstone of the midterm elections, and each and every American election, is money. We hear that the Tea Party candidates, and the Republicans in general, are receiving massive financial support, some of which is declared while some other remains undeclared and from dubious sources. Hence, the outcome of the elections will not be decided by Barack Obama's record in the White House, but by those who will spend the most on their election campaigns. [email protected]
