A relief for Europe - but will gridlock persist?

Anxious Europeans have been able to breathe easier the past two days, after Tuesday’s reelection of US president Barack Obama. But the relief has much more to do with the defeat of Mitt Romney than with Obama himself.

Europe isn’t the only place feeling relieved because of a dislike for Romney. Outside Israel, there probably wasn’t one country on the globe that was excited about the prospect of a Romney presidency.

The Republican candidate's dangerous rhetoric seemed almost guaranteed to launch a war with Iran which no US allies would have been keen to sign up to. He had described Russia as America’s “greatest geopolitical foe” and had spoken of China as if it was the evil empire, promising to “get tough” with them in a way Obama hadn’t (although he never provided details about what that would mean). Latin America recoiled at his extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, and Africa was less than excited about his promises to cut US overseas aid.

In Brussels, there is a sense that long-stalled bilateral issues that were waiting until the resolution of the election can finally be taken off the back burner. There is (perhaps naïve) hope that a second-term Obama can show up to the UN climate summit in Doha next month with a reverse-course on the US intransigence in taking action to combat global warming. Negotiations on a US-EU free trade deal can now begin. Most importantly – fears that Europe was about to see a return to the trans-Atlantic tensions that marked the George W. Bush era have now been allayed.

The biggest American political story Europeans haven't heard of

The US presidential primary race has attracted its usual amount of fascination here in Europe, and yesterday’s developments - with the Iowa race being re-called for Santorum and Rick Perry dropping out - were front page material. But behind the spectacle of the drawn-out US primaries, there is a far more interesting story going on in the state capitals.

Of course it’s not surprising that the European media is ignoring these huge developments at state level, because the Washington beltway media has also ignored them. They also ignored the unprecedented political revolution in 2010 that the recent events are a reaction to. While in Europe the media tends to ignore ‘federal’ (EU) politics and focus only on member state politics, in the US it is the opposite. The US media (even local state media) tends to focus on federal politics in Washington and there is little interest in what goes on in state capitals.

Thus, when the Republicans enjoyed an unprecedented victory in the 2010 midterm elections, the focus was almost entirely on the fact that they had taken control of the US House of Representatives. What was largely ignored was the fact that they had at the same time taken over state legislatures with unprecedented majorities – giving Republicans the most power in state governments they have had in decades. Republicans wrested six governorships from Democrats, giving them control of 30 of the 50 state executives. Five states saw both legislative chambers (state senate and state house) switch from Democrat to Republican majorities. In seven other states they gave themselves control of the entire legislature by picking up huge majorities in an additional chamber. The elections left Republicans controlling the entire government of half of US states, leaving them with Hungary-like majorities capable of passing whatever state legislation they like.

Is Iowa the problem, or is it the primary system?

While I was home in the US over the past few weeks I witnessed the quadrennial spectacle of the Iowa caucuses - shivering reporters in front of the capital dome in Des Moines, candidates eating corn on the cob while clutching plump cord-fed babies, the usual fare. And I was also able to witness the quadrennial griping about why the United States allows “a few hundred farmers” to pick its president.

The complaining about the Iowa caucus, where the first nominating primary for both political parties’ presidential candidates is held, is both predictable and legitimate – even if the language used sometimes smacks of regional snobbery. The Iowa caucus makes or breaks politicians running for the presidency. Barack Obama owes his presidency to winning the Iowa Democratic caucus in 2008. This year, the result of the Republican caucus will force Michele Bachman and Rick Perry to drop out of the race. And the Iowans have elevated Rick Santorum from obscurity to be the main challenger to frontrunner Mitt Romney.

But the Iowa caucus is a big deal only because it is first. And being first means presidential candidates promise Iowa all sorts of lovely things (just look at the corn subsidies of the past four decades – and you wonder why Americans have corn syrup in most of their food for no reason?). The Iowans go through outrageous lengths to make sure they are first. When South Carolina and New Hampshire tried to move their primaries ahead of them this year, Iowa moved theirs to the earliest possible day in 2012 – 3 January.

This year the criticism went perhaps a little too far. A professor at the University of Iowa (himself a transplant from New Jersey) wrote a column for The Atlantic about a much-asked question – why should a state that is not ethnically or ideologically reflective of the country as a whole be given such a prominent role in selecting the nation’s president? But he asked it in a way that was incendiary to say the least, calling Iowa a place that's "culturally backward" and teeming with "slum towns”, where the 96% white population “clings to guns and religion.”

Is America too old to function?

One of the most frequent clichés I hear as an American living in Europe is that the US is a 'new country' while nations on this continent are 'old'. It is usually used to explain away American peculiarities, as if the US is a naïve child who just hasn't had the time to attain the wisdom of the more mature, centuries-old European states.

But however often it's repeated, this common wisdom is patently false. As a country, the United States is older than the vast majority of European states. At the time of the US declaration of independence in 1776, the states of Belgium, Germany, Italy, Finland, Romania, Slovakia, Greece and Latvia had all never existed yet in any form. And that's just to name a few. The fact is that European nations are actually quite young - and that is what makes them more agile in the face of modern problems than the United States.

Even the European countries which did exist in some form in 1776 - such as Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and France - today barely resemble what they were at that time. The Kingdoms of France and Portugal in 1776 are now republics with completely different systems of government. And going in the other direction, the Dutch Republic in 1776 - a loose confederation of provinces - bears little resemblance to today's Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The US has had the same governing structure since 1789, the date that marks the founding of the current American republic with the adoption of the US constitution (which replaced the previous Articles of Confederation in place since 1776). The US has used the same government system since then. Contrast this with France - whose current republic has only been in place since 1958 – or the Federal Republic of Germany, which dates from 1949. Other founding dates of current European government systems include: Italy – 1947, Spain – 1978 and Poland – 1997.

In fact the only European governments that could legitimately claim to be older than the US government system are the constitutional monarchies of Britain, Denmark and Sweden – but even this is arguable since they have had significant constitutional changes over the past 200 years.

Political games are exacerbating both Atlantic debt crises

These are not exactly inspiring times for leadership in the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, a potential catastrophic default is looming largely as a result of short-sighted political manoeuvring. This is leading some to question whether the 20th century democratic institutions we have built our societies around are adequate to handle the challenges of this century.

In the United States, Republicans are holding hostage an authorisation to raise the amount of money the US is authorised to borrow – normally a routine housekeeping operation done by every congress – until the Obama administration agrees to massive cuts in government spending. The Democrats have offered to give them those cuts, but only if they are accompanied by an increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans and the closure of corporate tax loop holes. The Republican leadership, terrified of the reaction of their base voters to any tax increase (even if it will have no effect on 98% of Americans) have refused the offer.

If the United States does not raise the debt ceiling by 2 August, it will go into default. This would almost surely have a disastrous effect on the worldwide economy. This weekend UK Business Secretary Vince Cable said that the "rightwing nutters" who are holding the debt ceiling authorisation hostage for their short-term political gain are a bigger threat to the world economy than the problems in the eurozone.

But conservatives in America aren't the only ones playing with fire in order to reap short-term political gain. The same kind of thinking seems to be guiding Cable's coalition boss. Over the past week UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his ministers have been saying that the UK intends to exploit the current eurozone crisis in order to "maximise what we want in terms of our engagement in Europe."

America unhinged

Perhaps the only thing more depressing than this weekend's assassination shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was the fact that it was so utterly unsurprising. The shooting, which for the moment remains an attempted assassination as its intended target fights for her life in hospital, so far has a death toll of six out of 20 people shot. For many observers in the US, the shooting is the culmination of two years of incendiary rhetoric from the right, an episode of far-right violence that people have been warning was coming soon. When you have mainstream American politicians telling people that the government is trying to establish "death panels" in its healthcare legislation and that there has been a "Socialist takeover" of the government that can only be brought to an end using "second amendment remedies", it was only a matter of time before some unhinged person on the far right acted out in violence.

The motives of the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, are not yet clear. In fact authorities are looking into the possibility of a second shooter. It is not yet known whether Loughner had any specific ties to the Tea Party movement, whether he was an admirer of Sarah Palin, or whether he was a fan of incendiary Fox News hosts such as Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. But from his online postings and notes, it already seems clear that Loughner subscribed to far right ideology. His online postings and YouTube videos rant against government tyranny, using language that is eerily reminiscent of the language the mainstream right has been increasingly using. In one of his postings, Loughner refers disparagingly to 'currency that's not backed by gold or silver' - an idea that is the subject of regular rants on Mr. Beck's show (right before his commercials for gold investment). This idea that a non-gold-backed currency is unconstitutional was also a main focus of the anti-government 'patriot movement' of the 1990's that was responsible for violence in the middle part of that decade. Loughner also went on long rants about immigration, particularly Hispanic immigrants in Arizona.

Is Obama the world's worst negotiator?

Barack Obama is being attacked by his own party this week after a massive capitulation to Republicans giving large tax cuts to the wealthiest two percent of Americans. For Democrats, two years of frustration over the president's frequent urge to compromise with the opposition while getting nothing in return seems to have bubbled over and exploded in a torrent of anger.

From pundits to politicians, many Democrats were furious on Tuesday over what they see as Obama's lack of appetite for political fights. There was talk of a party revolt in the congress, with Democrats saying they would vote against the Obama-backed deal. The anger got so loud that the president was forced to summon a hastily arranged press conference where he forcefully defended himself against the accusations by his own party and insisted he is indeed a fighter. But his speech, which at times seemed dismissive of the disappointment  felt by his own party, has done little to quell the fury. Take a look some choice clips from the speech in this video clip below.

Daily Show 'sanity' rally: more harm to the left than good?

I thought I'd post a video from this weekend's Real Time with Bill Maher show on the subject of Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" because I remember last weekend a lot of Europeans were asking me about it and whether I was going to watch. "No," I told them, "I'm not going to watch it, and if I was in the US this weekend I wouldn't be attending it either." At the time I don't think I was articulating my annoyance with Stewart and the rally all that clearly, but I told my friends I thought the rally was going to be almost depressingly irrelevant. Of course in the end it was. Though the rally had a huge turnout, the youth vote in last Tuesday's election was the lowest in years. On Friday night, Bill Maher delivered a monologue that I think will resonate with a lot of American Daily Show viewers who were uncomfortable with Stewart's rally but couldn't articulate why.

Yes, the Daily Show rally, held on the national mall in Washington, may have attracted twice as many people as tea party pied piper and Fox News host Glenn Beck's "Rally to Restore American Honor" which it was meant to lampoon. But that was cold comfort to some in the dwindling ranks of the politically active American left, who saw the rally more as a depressing reminder of the current state of things than anything they could be proud of. The Daily Show's writers and producers have an undeniable liberal viewpoint, and the show spends most of its time making fun of Fox News and Republican politicians. But the show also likes to present itself as being "non-political." After showing outrageous clips from politicians on the right, host Jon Stewart frequently insists that the same level of craziness exists on the left. But he rarely provides any actual examples of this phantom American left.

Mosque hysteria: an ugly reflection on America

It makes me a bit queezy to have to write about this, but considering that this “ground zero mosque” issue has now crossed the Atlantic and is making the news in Europe, it would seem I have no choice. It’s incredible that such a ginned-up controversy has reached proportions so big that people are hearing about it here. Over the weekend while in Paris a French friend asked me incredulously, “I hear Obama is planning to build a giant mosque on ground zero?? What is he thinking??”

Le sigh. Yes, that’s it, Obama is personally flying down to the former site of the world trade center to build a mosque brick by brick. Honestly I don’t blame Europeans for being misinformed about this, the US media coverage has been almost completely fact-free, and that then gets passed on over here during a slow news month. And it’s an issue that easily resonates here in Europe because let’s face it, when it comes to Islam, America and Europe can be sisters in hysteria. So, forget whatever you’ve heard. Let’s review the facts, shall we?

After November: A Tea Party congress in America?

I just watched a somewhat bemused news story on French TV about Steven Slater, the US flight attendant who had had ENUF Monday, swearing at passengers before jumping out of a plane using the emergency slide. Apparently both sides of the Atlantic are in the full throes of the “silly season”, the term journalists use for the month of August when a lack of news results in an increased news focus on trivialities and non-stories. I myself am facing the daily frustration of having to write news stories at a time when no EU news is being made. Brussels basically shuts down in August and everyone takes their month-long vacations. Ah, Europe!

Consequently I don’t have much to write about for the blog either. So I thought I’d write a little something about the upcoming US midterm elections in November – since everyone keeps asking me about them. The spectre of them has had global implications in recent months, most notably in the Democratic leadership's decision to abandon the climate change bill because of fears its passage could anger voters before November. But the biggest effects of the election will be felt after November. It is looking ever more likely that the Democrats will lose their majority in the House of Representatives. And the new crop of ‘movement conservative’ Republicans that could be entering the congress will be the furthest to the right that the US has seen in decades. It could be an explosive result.

When 40 is more than 60: Why Republicans always win

In the wake of Tuesday’s game-changing Republican victory in Massachusetts I’ve been inundated by questions from perplexed Europeans. How is it, they ask incredulously, that one year after Barack Obama came into office on a wave of popular euphoria, he has somehow come to attract the rage of the very Americans he’s been trying to help?

The answer lies in this not-often-observed reality: despite the fact that voters banished Republicans from the leadership of every branch of government in the 2006 and 2008 elections, since Obama's inaugeration they have been able to wage one of the most effective oppositions in American history. Though the Grand Old Party is in the midst of a leadership vacuum and is no longer coming up with any actual policy ideas, they've somehow managed to stymie the Obama agenda to such a degree that in practice they are effectively a co-equal power in government. You’ve got to hand it to them, it’s truly a remarkable feat. They’ve managed to get the American public demanding a return to the party of George W. Bush.

Today's election could doom Obama presidency

Without hyperbole, one can say that today’s special election in Massachusetts is the most important poll of Barack Obama’s first term. Stunned into action, Democrats are madly criss-crossing the state to prevent a shocking political defeat that could not only kill the healthcare bill, but could also doom prospects for passing climate change legislation and financial reform. In other words, the result of today’s election could deal the new president such a grievous injury that he will be unable to recover and spend the next three years in lame duck status.

Exaggeration? Not really. The special election is to fill the senate seat held for 40 years by the legendary Democrat Ted Kennedy, who died last year. Massachusetts (often derided as “Taxachusetts” by the right) is without a doubt the most liberal state in America, and it is almost entirely dominated by Democrats. The entire congressional delegation (both senators and all ten representatives) are Democrats. In the Massachusett’s 200-person state legislature, only 21 representatives are Republicans.

Still, After All, a Centre-Right Country

Europe could be forgiven for thinking that now that Americans have put their government entirely in the hands of Democrats, the nation itself has made some sort of fundamental ideological shift. But as the opening stages of President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination show, the American political spectrum is still firmly grounded to the right.

Following the retirement of Justice David Souter, generally considered to be on the left side of moderate in his votes on the court, Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a moderate appellate court judge who would be entering the highest court in the land with more experience on the bench than any of the current justices. The media has focused largely on Sotomayor’s personal history, having been born to Puerto-Rican parents on a housing estate in the Bronx. She would be the first Hispanic person to serve on the court, and only the third woman.

Bizarely the right has latched on to this detail of her background to make the case that she is a “liberal activist judge,” even though her judicial record, largely moderate or unclear, doesn’t seem to reflect this. Apparently for the right, the fact that she is a Hispanic woman who was born poor means she'll make it illegal to be a white man and redistribute wealth. Obviously!

Funny enough, when arch-conservative justice Clarence Thomas was up for confirmation, his history of having been born a poor black man was considered an asset by the right.

Perhaps this kind of talk from the hard right was inevitable. In fact it wouldn’t even be worth talking about were it not for one other interesting development – in selling their supreme court nominee, the Obama Administration’s talking points have been actively stressing Sotomayor’s conservative credentials.

The Obama administration has wove a conservative narrative around Sotomayor, using much of the same language as Bush did to sell his supreme court nominees, in order to appeal to middle America. The administration has been at pains to point out how moderate she is, pointing out at every opportunity that she voted with conservative judges 95% of the time. They’ve also pointed out her anti-abortion rulings, such as when she upheld a ban on federal funds going to family planning groups that provided abortions overseas, or when she ruled in favour of a group of Connecticut anti-abortion protesters who asserted that police used excessive force against them at a demonstration.

Does anyone else find this a little bizarre? Barack Obama was elected in a landslide victory. The American public kicked the Republicans out of both the House and the Senate, handing the entire government over to the Democrats. Currently only 21% of Americans identify as Republicans. You would think that was a pretty big mandate for change right? So why does the Obama administration (and Congressional Democrats, as evidenced by their recent cave on closing Guantanamo Bay) seem to be bending over backwards to please a practically non-existent Republican party?

Can you imagine George W. Bush, when he nominated his two Supreme Court Justices, issuing talking points about how frequently they voted with their liberal colleagues, or highlighting cases in which they voted for abortion rights? The very idea is laughable. When the Bush administration went to sell their nominees they used the language of their base, talking about how Alito and Roberts represented “solid American values” and touting the conservative credentials, especially when working to sell the nominees to the religious right (at some points they even seemed to be implicitly promising that the two would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade).

And yet George W. Bush entered office having lost the popular vote, put into office by a Supreme Court ruling. By the time he was nominating his justices he was already spiralling down to the lowest approval rating of any US president in history. But was there serious talk of him selecting a moderate justice as a copromise with liberals? None.

And even though W appointed two unabashedly conservative justices (to join the other two ultra-conservative justices Scalia and Thomas already on the court), it seemed to go without saying before Obama made his selection that an unabashedly liberal justice wouldn’t even be a consideration. Given that following Bush’s appointments the court is now skewed fundamentally to the right (4 conservatives, 2 liberals and 2 moderates without Souter), adding another moderate to the mix isn’t going to significantly change the conservative direction of the court. If it’s unquestioned that a Republican president can appoint a conservative justice but a Democratic president can only appoint a moderate, it won’t be long before the idea of a “liberal justice” goes the way of the dodo. Rachel Maddow had a funny metaphor discussing this on her show Tuesday night.



This isn’t an isolated incident. Throughout the Obama presidency it’s been incredible to watch how many times the Democratic president and congress have caved in to an imaginary opposition. But here’s the explanation – while the political opposition may be imaginary – the popular opposition is not.

On a global political spectrum, the US political spectrum is still positioned firmly to the right. For instance in Europe, the Democrats would be centre-right and Republicans would be the hard right (and sometimes even the far right). This pretty much reflects the political ideology of Americans, a formula which has long favoured Republicans in US elections. This is, after all, a country where “liberal” and “Left” are still dirty words that most Democrats are loathe to identify themselves as. Even after Bill Clinton’s New Democrats shifted the party to the right (followed by Tony Blair doing the same with Labour across the pond) the Democrats seem to constantly be on the defensive, unable to stand up for progressive policies even when they occupy the presidency. Now that the Democrats control both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since the Carter administration, it seems their old curse is again rearing its ugly head. Even when they’re in power, Democrats are unable to push progressive policies on a fundamentally conservative population.

So Europeans shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that the American political spectrum is inching back their way. For 40 years the only thing that’s gotten Democrats elected into the White House is the ineptitude and corruption of their predecessors (two Bushes and a Nixon), and once they've put him there there’s been little achieved for the Left.

Strangely, even when the American left is in power, they remain isolated, ineffective and ignored.