HONG KONG - A year ago, Senator Barack Obama was still a long shot for the US
presidency. Readers of the column Campaign Outsider in this publication know
that I was among the last people in America not named Clinton or paid by one to
be convinced that Obama would beat Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic
Party presidential nomination.
In the general election, skeptics waited for Senator John McCain to launch a
deadly strike against the Illinois senator. A black man with a foreign father,
an Arabic name, and the most liberal voting
record in the Senate facing his first competitive race since losing a run for
Congress in 2000, Obama seemed like an easy mark for the Republican attack
machine that Hillary Clinton warned about.
But McCain never really laid a glove on him. Historians will ultimately decide
whether Obama slipped those punches because he's so good, or if McCain and his
comic sidekick, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, were so bad. Or whether President
George W Bush performed so appallingly that no Republican could have won the
2008 election, not even against a candidate with Obama's perceived
disadvantages with the American public.
Obama won the general election, and he won big. He got 69.5 million votes, 7
million more than any candidate in history, and the biggest margin
percentage-wise in the last five presidential elections. On Tuesday at noon in
Washington, DC, he will take the oath of office as the 44th president of the
United States. Now that he's walked the walk, Obama needs to talk the talk.
Off key
As president, Obama needs to act like a winner elected on a platform of change.
His middle-of-the-road approach to date, with a cabinet full of Bill Clinton
administration retreads, the inexplicable choice of Hillary Clinton as
secretary state, and, after campaigning to reverse the erroneous prosecution of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, retaining Robert Gates as secretary of
defense, haven't hit the right notes. His choice of Pastor Rick Warren to give
the inaugural invocation hit the wrong one.
Team Obama defends these choices as part of his effort to be president of all
Americans, bridging the gaps that widened and deepened dramatically during the
eight years of Bush, but trace back to Bush's political ancestor Ronald Reagan.
Obama wants Americans to learn to "disagree without being disagreeable", and
inviting Warren was a strong, though thoroughly meaningless, gesture in this
direction.
Every new president tries to create a bipartisan ruling coalition: George W
Bush promised he would be a "uniter, not a divider". The difference is in how
Republicans and Democrats define bipartisanship.
Obama is reaching out toward the right, pulling himself closer to the middle in
the name of bipartisanship. Perhaps the tactic seems familiar because Bill
Clinton employed it as candidate and president. For many progressives, one of
the great mysteries of the 20th century was the virulent right-wing animosity
toward Clinton because, after all, he governed like a Republican.
A product of the centrist Democrat Leadership Council, Clinton made good on his
pledge to "end welfare as we know it". He balanced the federal budget, and
presided over economic growth on both Main Street and Wall Street with
business-friendly policies. The Clinton years revived the mantra of Republican
president Dwight D Eisenhower: peace and prosperity.
Bush telegraph
Contrast Clinton's approach with that of the outgoing Bush. Like Clinton, Bush
began his first term as a minority president, having won less than a majority
of the popular vote. Bush faced far deeper legitimacy questions. With fewer
votes than rival Al Gore, Bush was elected by five Supreme Court judges
appointed while his father served in the White House as vice president and then
president. If an African nation had chosen its leader this way, the US would
have cut off aid faster than you can say "Robert Mugabe".
Although he proposed to unite - and put an antithetical-to-his-base preacher,
Reverend Louis Leon, on his second inaugural program - Bush swerved the US hard
toward the right-wing agenda. He tried to break down constitutional barriers
between church and state. He instituted doctrinaire economic policies on taxes
and regulation that resulted in record government deficits at home, the highest
unemployment in decades, the near-meltdown of the US financial system, and the
most devastating global economic crisis since the 1930s.
Worst of all, Bush followed a group of fringe foreign policy ideologues, led by
Vice President Dick Cheney. Their pathological rejection of everything the
Clinton administration did included ignoring the al-Qaeda threat and clues that
foreshadowed the 9/11 attacks. Then Bush squandered the international goodwill
those attacks generated to indulge those same ideologues with a senseless
invasion of Iraq. Blind adherence to ideology led to a botched occupation that
continues to exacerbate the initial blunder.
Through all of these incidents, Republicans defined bipartisanism as
relentlessly pushing their agenda and challenging Democrats to either to beat
them or join them. Among Republicans, Bush's post-9/11 battle cry, "You're
either with us or against us," applies equally to domestic politics.
Beaten but unbowed
Even after losing Congress in 2006, and the presidency this year, Republicans
continue promoting those rejected policies. Last month, for example, lame duck
Bush appointees introduced new guidelines that widen healthcare providers'
scope to put personal religious beliefs ahead of the law and deny women
information about and access to birth control and abortion.
Congressional Republicans have become the opposition party in the most literal
sense, reflexively opposed to anything proposed by anyone, not matter what the
voters said. They opposed both their own president and the president-elect to
block the release of the remaining US$350 billion of the government's bank
bailout funds to register their ideological opposition to government
intervention in the free market. Last month, the Republicans defied Bush,
Obama, and common sense to block government aid to the auto industry to express
the party's institutionalized antipathy to organized labor.
In place of government action to protect jobs and stimulate the economy, these
Republicans propose tax cuts and deregulation, the same policies that created
the current mess. That voters repudiated those policies in 2006 and 2008 with
victories for the Democrats hasn't stopped Republicans from supporting them by
any means necessary. As for the Obama presidency, they've already given warning
that they plan to oppose key elements of his agenda, such as public works
spending.
While Democrats define bipartisanship as finding common ground to reach across
the aisle, Republicans see it differently: heads, we win; tails, don't you dare
go too far. Obama has been taking the Democratic approach of making nice with
enemies, and many progressives are sick of it. They think Democratic
cooperation with Bush helped sow the disasters of the past eight years, and now
the only reason to reach across the aisle is to bash heads.
Imagine how Republicans would have acted if a Democratic president had
committed Bush's blunders. Had Al Gore been president on September 11, 2001,
you can bet Republicans wouldn't have fallen into line behind him, they would
have impeached him. Republicans would have never ratified a promotion for an
official with the arrogance and incompetence of Condoleezza Rice, or the
extremist ideology of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Show some muscle
Now that the Democrats have won, progressives want their turn at the muscular
exercise of prerogatives they've endured for the past eight years. Despite
those gorgeous pecs, they haven't much seen political muscle from Obama.
Progressives crave the same kind of conviction and loyalty to core supporters
that Bush has demonstrated. We won, they lost, progressive believe, and those
facts, not compromises aimed at the next election or feel-good gestures, must
drive policy. Bipartisanship should begin with the losers reaching out to the
winners, not the other way around.
Of course, flexing your muscles can sometimes land you in a fight, and when you
fight, you can lose. Obama and his team demonstrated during the primary season
they're not scared of losing. Obama gave one of his best speeches of the
campaign following his upset loss in New Hampshire. After his February winning
streak that built a virtually insurmountable lead in the delegate count, Obama
lost what seemed like really important primaries in Texas, Ohio and
Pennsylvania. But he withstood those blows and won the nomination.
As president, Obama needs to show that same stomach to take a loss. He also has
to realize that while there will be no shortage of tests and issues he'll need
to face, there isn't a vote every week and the only poll that matters won't
come until the first Tuesday in November 2012. During the primaries, even while
racking up those losses, Obama and his team showed a valuable capacity to look
beyond the day's events to focus on that bigger picture. That outlook will
serve Obama well in the White House, if he can retain it.
It will be especially valuable because the mess Obama inherits presents
remarkable opportunities to be bold, to take risks in order to reap big
rewards. When the inauguration excitement is over, Obama will need the courage
to take those risks, the confidence to invite his opponents to join hands with
him, and the audacity to go it alone when he's convinced he's right. After
eight years of small-minded George Bush, the country doesn't just want a big
tent party as much as it wants big ideas.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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