Second Term Trials
will Reveal Mettle of 'Enigmatic' Obama (La Stampa,
Italy)
"The dossier on Obama's table pertains to the U.S. fiscal crisis, relations with China, the control of weapons of war on the U.S. market, and immigration reform. ... An American fiscal collapse and a strategic conflict with China would be more than enough fill the second term of any president. Yet Obama also has to deal with the old Middle East; the new face of the Muslim world after the Arab Spring; Iranian extortion over its nuclear program; a Putin weakened by a drop in oil prices but determined to hold on to power; and the need to revitalize relations with Europe."
American students who mingled with a crowd of half a million
to celebrate Barack Obama's first swearing in four years ago went to
work yesterday - at least, those who are fortunate enough to have jobs.
Others are out looking for work, as they are every Monday.
The abrupt shift from utopia to reality is a good way to summarize Obama's
second term. In 2009, the president led an America that had just fallen into
the worst financial crisis since 1929, and which faced the two wars that
followed September 11, 2001 - in Afghanistan and Iraq.
His administration had to suture the wounds of the past and
stimulate the economy with dollars and public spending, while coordinating a strategic
withdrawal from Kabul and Bagdad. The freefall into the abyss of economic crisis
was halted, but the two unfortunate military campaigns headed toward withdrawal
ceremonies without victory: the first global war against Islamic fundamentalist
terrorism has moved to the deserts of Mali, and is now led by the former “pacifists”
in Paris.
Today, the dossier on Obama's table pertains to the American
fiscal crisis, relations with China, the control of weapons of war on the U.S.
market, and immigration reform, which, the president hopes, will be on a par
with the controversial health reform of his first term.
Of all the choices that await Obama II and the judgment of
history, a return to fiscal balance in Washington is the most important. The president
has failed in any way to open a dialogue between the parties, and U.S. policy
has become so gangrenous that former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, whom Obama has nominated for secretary of defense,
has met with ferocious opposition from his former colleagues. They consider Hagel a traitor toward Israel.
Without an agreement, the $16 trillion debt will wreak havoc
on American society, politics, and its economy, triggering a deterioration in U.S.
influence around the world. It can't go on like this - and Obama knows it - but
he has done nothing about it, tearing up proposals from a bipartisan commission convened
to address the issue [the Simpson-Bowles
Commission]. America cannot continue to spend as if taxes were high - and
tax as if spending was low.
High spending and low taxes, as George W. Bush so catastrophically
demonstrated, leads to ruin. With a record number of Americans - baby boomers -
entering retirement, the three items of expenditure that must be cut are defense,
health, and social security. The most intelligent economists, like Kenneth Rogoff,
propose to “cut spending through innovation,” that is, by reforming the military,
hospitals, subsidies for the elderly, and hi-tech schools, in order to provide
services at reduced cost. But no one has the courage to suggest this to voters.
His second main agenda item concerns China. Prepared to overtake
the United States economically sometime between 2017 and 2018, China fears a
demographic crisis - too few births and too few girls - which would weaken the
country beginning in 2030. That leaves ten crucial years for hegemony over the
Pacific, and for this reason, Beijing is launching a naval fleet and its first
aircraft carrier, and is quarrelling with Japan over the Senkaku
Islands [aka/the Diaoyu Islands]. China's new
leader, Xi Jinping, must choose whether to hold a
dialogue with Obama, slip into a cold war, or launch a military conflict.
Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma and Australia, are asking for
U.S. protection against a Chinese offensive. And Japan, under its new Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, wants to annul Tokyo's anti-militarist
constitution - paradoxically drafted by the American General MacArthur -
increase defense spending, and rewrite history textbooks to portray the Rising
Sun as the victim rather than the aggressor in World War II.
An American fiscal collapse and a strategic conflict with
China would be more than enough fill the second term of any president. Yet Obama
also has to deal with the old Middle East, where there is no sign of progress
between Israel and the Palestinians; the new face of the Muslim world after the
Arab Spring; Iranian extortion over its nuclear program; a Putin weakened by a
drop in oil prices but determined to hold on to power; and the need to
revitalize relations with Europe, which has been so preoccupied with the euro
crisis that for years it hasn't been an attractive partner for Washington.
Posted By
Worldmeets.US
To this already turbulent agenda, in the aftermath of a
massacre at a school in Newtown, Obama wants to add a ban on automatic weapons.
In a live broadcast before the nation he was moved to tears, and felt obligated
to act.
Finally - as part of a debt of gratitude toward ethnic
voters, Hispanics and Asians, who sent him back to the White House by choosing
him over Republican Romney - Obama is working on immigration reform, with
amnesty for illegal immigrants (numbering around 15 million) who have been
living in the U.S. for years, and a reopening of the issue of visa applications
and permits for students and qualified technicians. And for day laborers, today
often intimidated, he could provide pathways to agricultural employment, and
then provide access to citizenship. The two Republican politicians that dream
of the White House, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, have seen how the desertion of
Hispanic voters defeated Mitt Romney, and have calculated that the rise of
ethnic voters is the key to winning the White House in 2016 and 2020. So they
are prepared to collaborate so that all the credit for immigration reform isn't
handed to the Democrats.
The record shows that these will be the obstacles in President
Barack Hussein Obama's second term. What emergencies, tragedies, and
opportunities history will direct his way, as it always does, no one knows. And
as always, it will be precisely his reaction to these movements of history that
will reveal to us what sort of president the enigmatic Obama really is.
