M.
Serajul Islam
With
days to go for the November 6th US Presidential election and with the
debates over, the fate of the US Presidential election is now in the hands of
the voters. The candidates are targeting undecided voters in swing states knowing
that voters in majority of the states will vote as they always do for one of
the two parties going by their historic preferences. Super Storm Sandy gave the
President some undue last moment advantage when he had the centre stage
managing the national emergency and Governor Romney officially pausing his
electioneering as a show of sympathy for the millions on USA’s east coast
facing the Super Storm. Nevertheless, as the two candidates look down the barrel,
the outcome is anybody’s guess polls taken after the debates placing the
candidates neck to neck.
Early
voting is already underway in some of the states (suspended in the east coast
due to Sandy) and the President himself has already voted! There is extreme
tension in both the teams because to quote a cliché, this one is going to go to
the wires. For the President, this should not have been so. The Democratic
National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina in the first week of
September that was held after a lack luster Republican Convention a week
earlier had set the President’s campaign on the right track to cross the
November 6 finishing line comfortably. The DNC was extremely successful and
helped the President increase his lead in opinion polls alarmingly for his
opponent. Perhaps, the President’s team was led to a false sense of complacency
as a consequence and slowed down their
efforts, assuming that they were already in the comfort zone. In the key swing
states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the outlook was good.
Thus
going to the Presidential debates, the Republican team was wary of the way the
fortunes of the two parties were shaping. On the way to the debates, the
Republicans added more to their discomfort when Governor Romney was caught in a
secretly taped video making disparaging remarks about the US middle class. That
gaffe was spun successfully by the media sympathetic to the Democrats and was
nick named “the 47% gaffe” with significant potentials to damage the Governor’s
campaign. Many supporters of the President expected him to use the “47% gaffe”
in the first of the 3 presidential debates to portray the Governor as a
candidate of the rich with no sympathy for the middle class that they were
convinced would further increase his lead over his opponent.
Thus
Governor Romney was hoping for something unexpected to bring him back to the race
while continuing to blame President Obama for the current economic ills facing
the United States on way to the presidential debates. The key element in that
strategy has been the unemployment rate that was 8.2% before the debates, a
figure with which no presidential candidate has entered the White House in
recent memory. The other elements in
that strategy have been the huge national debt, high spending by the federal
government and the economic recession of the country from where it is coming
out painfully slowly for comfort of voters across the political divide. The
President’s team was convinced they had been able to explain to the voters that
the economic recession facing the Americans has not been the doing of the
President and his administration but the outcome of the eight years of
President Bush and his two wars that drained the national coffers of huge
amount of tax payer’s money. They were also led to believe that the President’s
policy with regards to the auto industry had convinced voters that his bail out
policy for the economy was working.
Thus
a complacent President Obama went to the first Presidential debate thinking he
did not have to do much other than appear “presidential” and get the debates
out of the way. That complacent attitude, should he fail in his re-election
bid, would no doubt be considered his major failure. By his complacency, he answered
Governor Romney’s prayer for something unexpected. For not once in the course
of that 90 minutes long debate did he mention the Governor’s infamous 47% gaffe.
He allowed Governor Romney instead to
paint the President as distant to the sufferings of the average Americans who
are in the middle of their worst economic recession for many decades and
without a plan to bring them out of it. What the President needed to do was to
reiterate what President Clinton had said in his NDC speech, that the current economic predicament of
Americans did not drop suddenly 4 years
ago but was the result of the failed policies of the President Bush and that Governor Romney was promising
to take the country back to that economic predicament, if elected.
The
President failed to make these crucial points and failed badly in the debate and
lost it and with it, the momentum. In fact, in the period after that, the
Governor has closed the gap dangerously for the President and before Sandy, was
even with the President in the opinion polls. Although the President rebounded
in the next two debates and Vice President Joe Biden made a major impact in the
only Vice Presidential debate, these efforts have not been enough to halt the
Governor. Even the fall of unemployment rate under 8% for the first time during
this administration to 7.8% that came after the first debate went un-noticed, a
figure that although still high, no doubt indicated that the President’s
economic policies are working.
Thus
Governor Romney, despite his 47% gaffe against the middle class and another he
made about the women in the second Presidential debate, the “women in binder” reference,
has gained momentum with his strong performance in the first debate. The Governor
used the major slip of the President in the first debate to establish in the
mind of the voters that the economy is in a deplorable state and the President
cannot be trusted with another term to take the country out of its current
economic predicament. As a consequence till Super Sandy hit the east coast as
one of the worst natural disasters in US history, there was practically nothing
dividing the candidates.
Super
storm Sandy may have given the President the edge that he now desperately needs
having done an excellent job before the storm hit and then in managing the
aftermath of the disaster. Lot is being
made of the praise that the President has received from the Governor of New
Jersey Chris Christie for his management of Sandy. The Governor had delivered
the keynote address at the Republican National Convention. Meanwhile, news of
the economy emerging in the critical days leading to the election is also
encouraging for the President. The IMF while writing its latest report on world
economy has said that over the next four years, the US economy will grow at the
strongest rate among the developed nations; at 3% compared to France and
Germany’s 1.2% and Canada’s 2.3%. Commenting on the IMF report, Fareed Zakaria has said that the strong growth
of the US economy is a sign that it is recovering “thanks to Obama and
Bernanke”. The serious question that would only be known after November 6 is
whether the President and his team succeeded in conveying this message to the voters
together with the palpably damaging issues to Governor Romney such as his 47%
gaffe, his dislike for the middle class and his indifference to the women voters.
The writer is a
retired Secretary and a former Ambassador to Japan and Egypt
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