How will Obama handle this defeat?
Jan 29, 2010
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A "great debate" has begun as
to how Barack Obama should respond to the Republican win in Massachusetts last week, "which was
clearly a protest vote against him, congressional Democrats and their signature
policy proposal: the healthcare bill", says Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. My
advice is simple: Barack Obama needs to get away from the politics of
legislating – "slicing and dicing policy proposals to cobble together
legislative majorities" – and go back to acting like a president, "especially
the president he campaigned to become".
The healthcare bill – which appeared "fiscally
irresponsible", excessive and "perverted by the kind of... legalised
bribery that characterises Congress at work" – has tainted Obama, agrees
Gil Troy in Canada's
Globe and Mail. Instead of "hovering above the fray like the philosopher-king
most Americans thought they were electing, Mr Obama got mired in Washington's political
muck". He should learn from the "great Democratic Party Phoenix",
Bill Clinton, who revived his presidency by playing to the centre – repeatedly.
But Obama is no Clinton, "for good and bad", says
Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. "He is the man of the big picture, not
the daily skirmish." The Democrats can't drop the healthcare reform; they
will be "slammed" in November's mid-term elections as the "do-nothing
Congress" if they drop a bill that has "obsessed" them for a
year.
But Obama should heed Clinton's famous advice, 'It's the economy,
stupid' – and, thankfully, he appears to be doing just that. His first response
to the Massachusetts
vote was a "direct attack on the banks, demanding they no longer play the
roulette table with their depositors' money". He should keep up the fight.
"Let the Republicans filibuster that."
Of course they "won't dare block
the financial regulatory reform now taking shape on Capitol Hill", says
Rupert Cornwell in The Sunday Times. Obama's bid to "right the ship"
with a populist declaration of war on the big banks is a shrewd move. It was
his focus on healthcare reform, noble as that may be, that misjudged the public
mood. What the public wanted was a "laser's focus on the economy and jobs".
Give him a break, says Matthew Norman in
The Independent. Obama inherited the worst financial crisis in 80 years andtwo
wars. He has made a "hugely encouraging start", averting a depression
and shepherding the economy "back into modest but promising growth".
Obama will be vindicated before long.
Ronald Reagan also inherited a "gruesome
legacy of economic chaos" and a year into his presidency his approval
rating also slumped to about 50% (and sunk much further in his second). But two
years later he was re-elected. "Then, as with all modern US recession, the growth in jobs
lagged far being the improving statistics."
The trajectory of the economic cycle may be just as
favourable to Obama. Given that, and the "rudderless drift" of a "dementedly
vindictive" Republican Party with no credible presidential candidate, "the
even money about Obama's re-election available on Betfair looks to me the bet
of the millennium".
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