Mid Term Elections

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/LK04Dj02.html


The economy is the bottom line
By Ian Williams
Asia Times 4 November 2010

WASHINGTON - With the Democrats holding onto the senate, albeit barely, and the Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives following Tuesday's mid-term elections in the United States, there is still not likely to be a dramatic change in the policy of the United States.

Above all, President Barack Obama remains in the White House with a veto that the Republicans cannot surmount, not least because many of the so called "Blue Dog" Democrats who so often acted like a Republican fifth column actually lost their seats. So the result was not the Tea Party tsunami, not least with the resounding defeat of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware but it was certainly more than a storm in a teacup.

The good news for democracy is that the US elections reportedly experienced a record turnout. The bad news is that that was just over 41% of registered voters, who amount to only 71% of eligible US citizens. So all it takes for a landslide is a vote of some 15% of Americans and a switch by just a handful of votes. The result does not signal a huge popular upsurge, let alone a tectonic shift in the bedrock of the American body politic, as a quick look at the map shows.

The heavily populated and urbanized East and West Coast stayed Democrat, in the senate, the House and the governorships. In California, despite the huge personal fortunes of the Republican contenders being brought to bear, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown comfortably won the senate seat and the governorship. In New York, both Democratic senators and the governorwon handily, as did the Democratic contender for the attorney-general, who is the watchman for Wall Street.

Democrat senate and House leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, despite being used almost as swear words by the Republican campaign material, actually won re-election
comfortably. Landslides are relative at the best of times, and the whole US system is designed to ensure that not too much can change in one election - which is another reason for the low turnout.

But while the Republican strode to victory on all the things they are against, by getting the majority in the House they have fitted themselves up. After two years of trying to frustrate every Democratic initiative, and blaming their opponents for the economic crisis, they are now in charge of spending and tax-setting for the next two years. In short, they are responsible for the deficit. They should be prepared since their incumbent leaders were responsible for building it to the heights that Obama inherited.

The split control means that the Republicans cannot actually take initiatives that do not have the support of the president and the Democrats in the senate. If they want to make Obama's day, they will continue the campaign of negativity they have maintained for two years and attack him continuously.

The polls show that even with the lost support from the continuing economic doldrums, Obama is actually more popular than the Republican party now. With two years more of gridlock, the anger they exploited this time will splash back on them. Almost certainly, the Tea Party candidates lost the Republicans the chance to take the senate, but enough of them were elected to make it highly likely that the Republicans in congress will be culpably uncooperative for the next two years.

The world watches
So what do tonight's results mean for the rest of the world? Interestingly, foreign relations were not a big issue. For example, in an election dominated by anger, conservatives were unsure whether they should condemn Obama for continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or for not withdrawing.

Tea Party candidates refused interviews with the "mainstream media" who might have elicited views on the rest of the world and their followers are from a long tradition of American isolationists and exceptionalists who had certainly put foreign relations very low in their priorities, unless it was to find out which African country they thought had given birth to Obama.

Relatively muted compared with previous years, there is a persistent susurrus of repudiation of international organizations and the United Nations, and there were the populist jibes, from both sides of the partisan divide, about China. International agreements on almost any issue from disarmament to climate change will almost certainly fail ratification in the senate.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's supporters were praying for a Democrat defeat, they will find it will do little good. If the Republicans choose to challenge Obama on foreign policy issues, they risk serious alienation of those whose anger voted them in. That anger was based on the economic situation and a certain degree of amnesia about whose policies actually brought it about. A demand, for example, that the US continue to give billions of dollars to a foreign government that refuses to listen to Washington is not one that is a winner outside some neo-conservative and Christian right circles.

Obama will certainly not neglect US commitments to the rest of the world, but he can scarcely risk taking too high a profile if he seems to be neglecting the domestic economy, whose care and resuscitation will clearly absorb much attention, even though he seems to trust Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to cover his back there.

However, the worst effect for the rest of the world is that, despite the setbacks, the fiscal and trade deficits and the military over-stretch, the US is still the locomotive of the world economy. And thanks to its dysfunctional system of government, ossified over 200 years, it is off the rails with no clear hand on the controls.

The US economy needs decisive action and leadership, and the elections have made it even less likely than before that it will get it. That is bad news for the rest of the world, now matter how much schadenfreude other countries might derive from seeing the giant cut low, they will be hurt as well if it stumbles.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military
Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Love Americans Loathe America - full text

Love Americans, loathe America
Join the somewhat immoderate debate in Comment-is-Free

John Bolton's attack on the US state department, the same week as the Pew poll on global attitudes, raises questions about American diplomacy: is it an oxymoron?
Ian Williams


July 1, 2007 5:00 PM

This week former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton lamented to the Jerusalem Post
that the Bush administration's foreign policy today was "not the same" because of what he complained was the state department's overwhelming dominance.

"The state department has adopted the European view and other voices have been sidelined," he moaned, complaining that the US is not currently pushing the military option against Iran. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice "is overwhelmingly predominant on foreign policy," presumably discounting his chances of another recess appointment in American diplomacy.

Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali once noted that neither the Roman Empire nor the US had any patience for diplomacy, which is "perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness." However, as the Parthians, Goths, Huns and Vandals, were to show, not paying attention to the lesser breeds without the law can have penalties.

"American diplomacy" has often seemed liked an oxymoron, and no more so than when conducted by Bolton. Despite the professionalism of the state department (apart from occasional understandable lapses like when political appointees there rewarded Slovenia instead of Slovakia for joining the "coalition of the willing," in Iraq, American foreign policy is too often contrived by lobbyists and interest groups. Who would guess from watching Fox News or listening to GOP legislators that even after several years of swift-boating Kofi Annan, more Americans (48%) have a positive view of the UN (39%) than oppose it. Incidentally, that makes the UN more popular with Americans than George W. Bush - and, by extension, than John Bolton.

There are signs that the global public can be quite sophisticated. The Pew Poll this week showed that people across the world in 47 countries can distinguish between Americans and their country's foreign policy. It reported that "favorable ratings of America are lower in 26 of 33 countries for which trends are available."

But the pollsters report that while only 30% of Germans have a positive view of the US, 63% have a favorable opinion of its citizens. And while only slim majorities in Canada and Great Britain express a favorable opinion of the US, views of Americans as individuals are overwhelmingly positive. In the Middle East for obvious reasons, the US is widely distrusted and even while the locals support US calls for democracy, most people surveyed across the world assume that the US only supports democracy when it is expedient for its national interests.

Part of an effective diplomacy is "see ourselves as others see us," and that is something missing from how American foreign policy is formulated. In fact, looking at how badly and parochially US broadcast media covers foreign affairs, it's remarkable that the public is as sophisticated as it is. (One of the bemusing results is that while 42% of Israelis say that America is too supportive of their country, only 27% of Americans see their country's foreign policy biased toward Israel.)

For politicians in congress, foreign policy is like academic politics, the stakes are so low that anyone can play, with no significant penalty. As long as they do not cross any of the significant lobbies, whether Israel or Cuba, they can sign on for silly resolutions, sign up for boycotts and sanctions, confident that most of the public do not know what they are up to.

Almost as bad is the White House, and the Pentagon which it has stacked with conservative clones who share the same faith-based view of the world. The world's public, including Americans but presumably excluding the cheering Albanians, have a perceptively negative view of Bush's foreign policy.

That leaves the state department, whose professionals, when left to their own devices, often try to temper the excesses of Capitol Hill and the White House. If Bolton is right, it is a heartening change for the US and the world - and not just about Iran. Shame it is too late for Iraq.