Obama “got” Osama, but will Osama “get” Obama the re-election next year? The gunning down of the al Qaeda leader in Abbottabad, Pakistan, may have won initial praise for the American President on his “decisiveness” in staying with Operation Geronimo that carried a lot of risk.
But the aftermath was something of a surprise: President Obama got a “bounce” of between six and eleven points; Wall Street remained flat, and so did the US currency. With all the so-called political lift for Obama, his rating on handling the economy went down by at least three points.
Osama bin Laden will be a factor — though a small one — in the November 2012 election, but in the shorter term perspective there are other things that the Obama administration will have to keep in mind. And these will include the outrage in Congress over Pakistan; the emerging framework of relations with that South Asian country; the war on terrorism and the future of American operations in Afghanistan. As it is the Democratic administration expects voices to emerge on the need to continue with the present state of play in Afghanistan, now that bin Laden is out of the way. But will all these weigh in heavily at the time of the electoral showdown?
It is not as though the President, his advisors and strategists for 2012 are missing the point: that when it comes to showdown time in November 2012, Americans are going to vote by their pocketbooks. Foreign policy has rarely mattered. And Obama does not have to look too far back in history.
At the end of the First Gulf War in 1991,the then President, George H. W. Bush, had an approval rating of about 90 per cent, but went on to lose the election next year to Bill Clinton.
“It's the economy, stupid” was a slogan coined by Clinton strategists, and used so effectively against the Republican incumbent in 1992, that it eventually carried the day. And this is precisely what the Democratic President is being reminded of today — that Osama bin Laden is not going to deliver him the White House for a second time; and if quick and determined efforts are not made to revitalise the economy, it could well turn out to be a one-term Presidency.
The stakes are not just for the President, it is also for the Democrats, especially in the United States Senate. Of the 33 seats that will be up for re-election in 2012, Democrats will be defending 23 of them; and at least six of the eight open seats. And with the Republicans having wrested control of the House of Representatives, the loss of the Senate by Democrats in the next election will be a major setback if President Obama comes back for a second term.
The debate on raising the debt ceiling is not the only issue that faces the Obama administration as it jostles with the Grand Old Party on Capitol Hill. It simply has to do with almost everything that concerns the economy.
CONTENTIOUS ISSUES
The national debt of $14 trillion aside, it has to do with unemployment, which is pegged around 9 per cent; sluggish housing starts, with home-building at its lowest point in more than two decades; foreclosures continuing to be high; disposable income growing at less than 3 per cent per year; and questions on the real impact of the billions of dollars poured in by way of stimulus plans.
Republicans have been hammering away on the issue of raising the debt ceiling, stressing that this would have to come to terms with the larger aspects of spending programmes; and Democrats are arguing that the Grand Old Party is only looking for ways to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid.
In fact, the Obama White House is being pressured not to “negotiate” with the Republicans on anything that may have to do with Medicare and Medicaid; and are looking at the first signals of the administration as a sign of weakness.
It is about eight months away from the active primary season. It is unlikely that another Democrat is going to enter the fray to complicate matters for President Obama.
And it really is an open season within the Republican camp on who will challenge the Democratic incumbent. The Grand Old Party must have specific alternatives to be able to make a meaningful stand in 2012.
And President Obama knows full well that unless states like Ohio and Florida move up the economic ladder in the next 18 months or so, it is not going to be a repeat of 2008.
(The author is Head, School of Media Studies of the Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University, Chennai.)