The real reason why Obama might actually win
The national polls are tied and President Obama has a lead in Ohio. Mitt Romney needs Ohio to win the Electoral College and consequently the election. Therefore, it looks like the President might just pull off the unthinkable – an incumbent victory marred by scandal (Benghazi and Fast & Furious), an unpopular war (Afghanistan), high unemployment (7.9%), record debt ($16 trillion), and a struggling economy (2% GDP growth).
In any other election during any other time, it would be absolutely impossible for the incumbent to retain power. But in the United States today, there are 3 prominent political factors in masking the President’s incompetence that might give him an unlikely second term.
The first factor is the unpopularity of the President’s predecessor. When President Obama took office 4 years ago the trajectory of the economy was diving, debt was overwhelming, and there were 2, not just one, unpopular wars. President Bush was virtually blamed for all of this. Because of these difficult challenges, and deferred blame, it would seem that any failures by Obama would be excusable, and even the smallest progress would be laudable. But this is not necessarily true. Not if you either impede progress or make things worse. And not if the previous conditions weren’t as perilous as they were made out to be.
Obama impeded what traditionally would have been a normal cyclical recovery by overregulating and nebulously reinvesting. Because of Obamacare and no long term tax policy, businesses have been sitting on their cash instead of hiring. He actually made things worse by failing to pass a budget and doubling our debt. A debt so ominous that it could obliterate the dollar at China’s time and choosing.
More apparently, the President pettily and enthusiastically uses his predecessor’s unpopularity to create a set of hyper-perilous conditions in the past in order to show progress when there is none. He frequently touts ending the war in Iraq when in reality President Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in 2008 that ended the war in 2011. And Afghanistan has only gotten worse since 2009, not better. He even attacks Romney’s economic policies based on two false assumptions. The first assumption being that it was solely Bush economic policies that caused the recession, the next being that Romney would replicate those very same policies.
The second and perhaps most abhorrent factor in masking President Obama’s incompetence is the media. The media has done and continues to do a great job of disseminating this narrative that Obama is just trying to clean up the mess Bush left. When Obama ran for President in 2008 they romanticized him with affectionate hyperbole based solely on his rhetoric, yet they did little to vet him. He had done little in the state legislature and less in the Senate. He also had a half dozen or so radical associations, some of which included Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.
Now during his presidency, they have given him a pass on almost every major failure or controversy associated with his administration. From an ineffective stimulus to an unpopular healthcare bill. From a disadvantageous cap and trade agreement to precarious off-mic comment to the Russian president. Silence. When he came out for gay marriage this year, they applauded his progressive attitude instead of questioning his previous stance, or the convenient timing of his change of heart. When Bush was running for reelection they challenged him on Iraq all the time. How often do you hear President Obama have to defend his strategy in Afghanistan?
The most disturbing silence coming from the media is their lack of critical coverage for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Libya. Almost two months after the attack the President still hasn’t had to answer what happened, why it happened, and why there were inconsistencies in the administration’s account of the events. In the second debate Candy Crowley of CNN actually inaccurately defended the President’s account. She later recanted her correction, but this recantation was barely covered at all.
The last and saddest factor is contemporary American culture itself. Never in history has the average American been so detached from national citizenry and global politics. People don’t know what’s really going on in our country or in our world. They get their news from Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central, Facebook, blog comments, and hearsay. They have no idea what the President has or hasn’t done, nor what role he plays in any or all of the major issues.
They also have an unprecedented sense of entitlement. They want world peace, cushy benefits, and good jobs. But they don’t want to pay for it. Obama magically promises all these things by taxing the rich. These comforting yet empty promises, more than his record, make him a hero.
So when the President is reelected tomorrow, don’t be confused as to why or how he won. He had the perfect set of historical circumstances for an impotent leader to retain power.
Latest posts by Robert O'Hara (Posts)
- The dawn of Syrian conflict - August 29, 2013
- Of Russian resets and NSA leaks - August 12, 2013
- Too much news is good news for Mullah Omar - July 25, 2013
- Trayvon Martin, tragedy and injustice - July 14, 2013
- Republican hangover: it’s not the message, it’s the messenger - November 15, 2012
Print This Post
Thank you for writing this. I just wish everyone in the nation were required to read it prior to Election Day. Good luck America.
“The most disturbing silence coming from the media is their lack of critical coverage for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Libya. ”
Thus, Fox News (~24/7 with a few breaks for Sandy), Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck radio do not constitute “media”? Pshaw.
“The last and saddest factor is contemporary American culture itself. Never in history has the average American been so detached from national citizenry and global politics. ”
A very tempting bromide. I almost want to agree with that, then I consider the long history of isolationism, the “Know Nothings,” and grand narratives of the U.S. as somehow separate from everywhere else. I do agree that news consumption and general thinking about politics in the world is problematic, but worse than it’s ever been? Hmm.
Then again, this is the era of Fox….a major media company that derides the “mainstream” media, despite using a very, very similar business model.
This is my favorite claim: “Obama impeded what traditionally would have been a normal cyclical recovery by overregulating and nebulously reinvesting.”
Evidence? Even Paul Krugman offers evidence to the contrary. Could you find one economist (not linked with Heritage of AEI, of course) to back you up here? Just one?
I’m an outsider; I’m not American. I don’t carry a torch for Obama, although I would admit it was a huge relief when he took over the reins from his predecessor. I tell you these things so that you may realise that I am not a worker for the Democratic party, or even an enthusiast for its policies. The claims you made regarding Obama’s term are frankly astonishing. I wonder if I have by some mischance been catapulted into a parallel universe, one where things are a little like this one, but not too much. People gave Obama a pass if they did, because they knew that he had inherited a diabolical situation; one which has almost destroyed numerous economies right across the western world where politicians, just like Bush did, allowed, encouraged even, vast personal borrowing by their people, stood by as property bubbles developed based on fictitious money that neither borrowers or banks actually held. Under Obama, America has done rather better at climbing out of this God awful mess than many other economies did, take virtually any economy in Europe as an example, not just the basket case Mediterranean ones where people are unproductive. Germans for example are paid now, just about what they were in 2001. Nobody faults the Germans for not working hard enough – unlike the Greeks. Obama’s rescue of the car industry has saved the jobs of tens of thousands and has allowed restructuring. Yes it was expensive, but so is throwing a whole industry to the wolves, and since the money he paid out was invented money anyway, the product of a fantasy money printing press he has at his disposal, in the end it cost nothing.
As for Obama failing to pass a budget – the planet I am on had news organisations which made it clear that it was the Republican Party that dragged things to the brink. I remember it – clearly. And while we are on the subject, why is it Obama’s fault that businesses are sitting on heaps of cash and not investing? That is a state of affairs that exists here in Europe and in the UK where I am, and it’s nothing to do with Obama, let me assure you. We don’t give him a second thought in deciding whether to expand our businesses or set up new ones and the so called ‘Obama Care’ thing doesn’t compute here, be assured. The reason I’m not opening a factory, or putting my all into a new business is as you say, lack of confidence, but that is to do with the fact that the whole western world is in a flat spin caused by vast debt, personal and government that was racked up before Obama came to the Oval Office. Banks (pretty much unregulated) right across the planet were sucked into funding property bubbles here and in the States – trillions of dollars, Euros and Pounds. The investments are largely worthless, or not to put too bleak a view on it, largely worth a great deal less than they were bought for.
If you look wider Robert, you’ll see that the blame for the slack economy in the States IS far beyond anything Obama did or didn’t do.
Did you mention ‘the War’? That was Bush. Once in, you can’t (worse luck) just cut and run. Iraq? What on God’s earth was that about? The place is ten times worse than it was before. Afghanistan? How come Bush morphed the raison d’etre from removing al-Queda (which was done by March 2002) to eliminating the Taliban? That’s like setting a war aim of removing the Republicans, or the Democrats. The Taliban (and God knows, I hate them) are a substantial proportion of the people of that wasteland of a country in the Hindu Kush. They are the conservative elements of a tribal society. Their attitudes are beastly to our western eyes, their world view is – well, it’s impossible to understand, or sympathise with, but they amount to probably forty percent of the people of the Pashtun tribal belt. None of the dragging out of that war is Obama’s fault. He inherited it, and has in my view not made a bad fist of fighting it. It can not be won though – not in the triumphalist terms the Bush administration set. We need a face saving formula to get out of there, one that won’t cause us too much humiliation, because the only way to get rid of the Taliban is to exterminate the population, and I doubt many of us are up for that. The sooner the better. This spring, my nephew Peter is going back there as in infantry officer for the third time. Since he and his men were engaged by snipers, bombs and other deviant barbarism virtually every day on his first two six month tours, I have my fingers crossed.