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Four more years
So the mud-slinging is over for now, in the US at least, with President Barack Obama winning a second term, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney by gaining more than the 270 votes needed to win.
In general that means that Europe will be waking up this morning with a general sigh of relief. Opinion polls have always shown President Obama to be more popular than Governor Romney – but for most governments continuity in Washington is better than a changing of the guard. The US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, as well as the President himself, has been closely involved in discussions on the eurozone. Added to that, the EU is so embroiled in its internal debates on the eurozone crisis that it doesn’t want any external distractions. The EU has also been working closely with the Obama administration on a variety of foreign policy issues – Iran in particular. Even if some of the key personnel change in a second Obama term, the President’s victory means there will be no dramatic change of course for us to deal with.
But what about the loser? What ought to pain Republicans most about Obama’s victory is that 2012 was entirely winnable for them. In European elections over the past few years, voters have thrown out leaders who were in charge during the worst of the financial crisis, whether those leaders deserved the blame or not. That Mitt Romney lost nonetheless is in part a tribute to his own weaknesses as a candidate. The Obama campaign put Romney on the defensive early about his work at Bain Capital, and left him there. The Republican nominee made any number of horrendous gaffes and never found a way to talk about himself or his agenda in a way that middle class voters could relate to.
But even a clumsy candidate might have beaten Obama if he’d played his cards right. Romney is not a right-wing extremist. To win the nomination, though, he had to pretend to be one, recasting himself as “severely conservative” and eschewing the reasonableness that made him a successful, moderate governor of the country’s most liberal state. He had to pass muster with his party’s right-wing base on taxes, immigration, climate change, abortion, and gay rights. Many of his statements on these issues were patently insincere. His pandering to the base made it possible for the Obama campaign to portray him as a right-wing radical from the start of the campaign. According to exit poll results, Romney won men as expected, but lost among women by 11 points—too large a gender gap to be overcome.
So we have President Barack Obama for another 4 years, saying “I have never been more hopeful”.
But perhaps Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times sums it up best: “If we’re lucky, we will find that we elected a different Obama from the one who won four years ago – not just a grayer Obama but a wiser one too.”
Book ’em Danno!
I don’t pretend to fully understand America’s political system or what is happening in the latest Presidential elections and I have no idea whether the USA should stick with Obama or vote in Romney instead. What I do understand, however, is that the behaviour of the individuals themselves, like our own less than savoury lot, always manages to regress back to their childhoods with the sort of playground bullying tactics coming into play that make us all want to cringe with embarrassment.
Putting Romney’s tax affairs to one side along with Obama’s dope smoking whilst at High School, the latest row seems to centre around Obama’s heritage.
Mitt Romney firmly believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, or at least he says he believes it. But apparently he also believes there’s no harm in jokingly implying otherwise. At a campaign stop in Michigan, the presumptive Republican nominee happily pointed out he’s a native and that ‘no one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.’
The usual partisan fireworks ensued with an Obama spokesman claiming Romney had chosen to ‘enlist in the birther movement,’ (don’t you just love these made up words?) and Republicans crying hypocrisy over Democrats ‘feigning outrage.’
The best response however may have come from the President’s Twitter account which posted the following tweet: Song of the day: ‘Born in the USA.’
If Obama (aged 51) does lose the campaign in November, may I suggest an alternative career for him? If he was indeed born in Honolulu, he could perhaps take the lead role in a new TV series called Hawaii 5-1!!!
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