This month two years ago, 63.4 million Americans approved Barack Obama and embraced his slogan of change – and the ability to make change happen. This month, Obama lost the midterm elections, when his electoral base abandoned him, because it felt that he had abandoned it when he won the elections. What happened exactly? Can Obama succeed in regaining the confidence of his moderate liberal base? Will he be a one-term president, or will he crush his Republican opponent, as Bill Clinton did in 1996 despite the disaster of the 1994 midterm elections? During the healthcare plan battle, Obama said that he was prepared to be a president for one term only, if that was the price of seeing the bill pass. This was not taken at face value back then, and was instead considered a declaration of his unwavering commitment to his principles. However, his supporters abandoned him after they concluded that the President has abandoned these principles. However, what happened is that he tried to be a president for all Americans, and did not use the powers available to him against the generals, the banks or the extremist Republican right. He did not even respond to the racist campaigns of lies against him, as he was accused of being a power-hungry African American, a socialist, and sometimes even a communist, or of not being not being an American, but rather a secret Muslim. In my opinion, what was equally bad as the racist McCarthyism targeting the president was the way he handled it, as he chose not to respond. This reinforced the impression that he is weak and that he is a boy scout, rather than a powerful president who must exercise his authority. Perhaps the midterm elections are themselves the best example of the failure of Obama's policy of compromise in dealing with his opponents. For example, the Republicans, specifically those who served in the Bush administration, ruined the U.S. economy with their failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror. Yet, they waged the most insolent election campaign possible, blaming Obama for the global financial crisis, which his predecessor caused. They even overlooked the wars, although the war on Iraq has cost three trillion dollars so far, and despite the fact that it was waged by the Bush administration, which falsified its premises, a war that was definitely a cause of the American financial crisis and the subsequent global financial crisis. Barack Obama, instead of putting his Republican opponents in the dock, thus became himself the accused, as if he were responsible for the catastrophes created by the policies of an extremist administration that brought together the advocates of an American empire and the neoconservatives who work for the interests of Israel alone, at the expense of American interests. While the United States remains the world's largest economy and its most powerful military force, China is catching up quickly, and is expected to overtake the U.S. by 2020. Meanwhile, the economies of the European Union continue to be integrated, and those combined are larger than the economy of the United States. This is not to mention that Europe does not squander a large fraction of its income on military expenses or foreign incursions. Barack Obama is supposed to be very intelligent, on par with Bill Clinton. However, he seems to be lacking in the political skills and boldness that the former president had. Barack Obama has many powers at his disposal. However, he must use them in order to remind the people of that, which is what he did, for example, when he sacked General Stanley McChrystal as commander of the coalition forces in Afghanistan. However, this was a rare, one-time instance, after which Obama went back to caving in to the demands of the generals, even when his declared policy has been to end Bush's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror. In January, the new congress will take office, where the Republicans have a majority in the House, and where their seats in the Senate have increased in number. They will oppose every proposal by the President, first of all, because they have a different political agenda than his own, and second of all, because they want Obama to look weak in preparation for dealing him a defeat in the presidential elections in two years. Perhaps Obama will opt to confront the Republicans who will tell him no, no matter how hard he tries not to extend the Bush tax cuts, which expire with the end of this year. In this regard, I read a study, which mentions that these cuts are worth 3.7 trillion dollars, or half the national debt, and that the middle class did not benefit from them by more than 880 dollars per household, while 21.8 percent of these cuts benefited the richest one percent of Americans, and 14.7 percent went to the richest 0.01 percent of Americans, or the extremely wealthy. Obama will surely benefit then, if he uses the trump cards at his disposal against the Republicans. Moreover, instead of having any prominent candidates to challenge Obama in 2012, they only have some names being proposed, some rehashed and some new to the political scene, and unknown outside of their states. This shall be the subject of my article tomorrow. [email protected]
