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Has Obama met hopes of the world? ()

Keith Richburg: On one year

Time is needed to clear the mess he inherited

Before he was elected president, Barack Obama, in The Audacity of Hope described himself as “a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. “I am bound to disappoint some, if not all of them,” he added.

Now just over nine months into office – with his struggle to get a health care bill, the regular nightly savaging by conservative talk show hosts, and escalating attacks from emboldened Republicans – Obama’s prediction seems prophetic.

He came to office riding the impossibly high hope that he was a transcendent political figure, the rare leader who could overcome this country’s deep divisions of race, party and ideology, to be a unifier and a healer after the divisive presidency of George W Bush. Now we are again back to our ideological trenches.

His critics on the far right – who never really bought into “Obamamania” but felt silenced by his popularity – are increasingly strident in their attacks. And his supporters on the far left, once breathlessly trading YouTube links of every Obama campaign speech, find themselves disillusioned that he was not the populist champion who would immediately bring American troops home and create universal health care.

The decline has been tracked in polling by the Washington Post and others. In January, two days before he took office, a Post poll found that 79% of Americans had a favourable view of Obama, and 71% said the election gave Obama a mandate for major social and economic change. The most recent Post poll, on 18 October, found his approval rating had dropped to 57%.

What all the polls broadly agree on is this; Obama’s drop in popularity can be attributed to the Republicans and professed independents moving away. Democrats still largely support the president, even if some on the left are growing frustrated. Republicans and independents – particularly those who describe themselves as “conservative” – have given up. So what happened?

The debate over the $787bn stimulus package and the bailout of the motor industry stoked fears that Obama was spending too much. Projections of soaring deficits have spooked fiscal conservatives. The August shouting match over health reform – with cries of “death panels” pulling the plug on ageing grannies and Republicans decrying a government “takeover” of health care – took its toll.

My view is that nine months is way too early to assess this presidency. Guantánamo Bay will be closed – just not yet. Troops will come home from Iraq, but not yet. Some form of a health care bill will pass, but its effects won’t be felt for years. The economy should recover, and add jobs, in time.

Obama seems never likely to live up to the lofty expectations of his most ardent – and impatient – supporters, or to be as awful as some of his most strident critics say. Time is needed to clean up the mess he inherited. Yet no one these days is of a mind to wait and see.

Keith Richburg is New York bureau chief of the Washington Post

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David Landau: On the Middle East

He is uniquely placed for breakthrough

Millions of Arabs across the Middle East were moved to tears watching Barack Obama “speak the truth” at Cairo University in June. So were many Israelis. The US bond with Israel was “unbreakable”, he declared, but: “The situation of the Palestinian people is intolerable… just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s.”

This was not a new American policy. But there was new determination, and immense personal commitment, in the words of the president whose personal provenance and young life seemed to symbolise the universal struggle for decolonisation and equality.

Since then, though, nothing has gone right for Obama in his quest “to personally pursue [the two-state solution] with all of the patience and dedication that the task requires”. The very next day, when he visited Buchenwald accompanied by former inmate Elie Wiesel, the Israeli right assailed him for implicitly endorsing the Arab contention that modern Israel was Christianity’s expiation for the Holocaust rather than Judaism’s rightful restoration to its ancient homeland.

The right, led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has succeeded in largely discrediting Obama in the eyes of the mainstream. But he has mainly himself and his advisers to blame. His persistent demand for a total Israeli settlement freeze played into Netanyahu’s hands. It made half-a-million Israeli citizens into international criminals. But it was also inconsistent with a decade of America’s policy, under both Clinton and Bush, which distinguished between the large settlement blocks, in Jerusalem and along the 1967 border, and the farther-flung Israeli settlements deliberately and provocatively planted in the heart of the Palestinian West Bank.

Worse still, Obama’s un-nuanced and unworkable demand pumped pointless hubris into the Palestinians’ rhetoric. Their leaders, who had previously accepted the principle of land swaps for the settlement blocks, now demanded a total settlement freeze as their condition for resuming peace talks. As a result, nine months into Obama’s term, there are no talks and tensions are rising dangerously around the holy sites in Jerusalem.

But the possibility of breakthrough is still available and this president is still uniquely placed to reach for it. America’s dialogue with Ahmadinejad’s Iran is approaching its moment of reckoning. Obama needs to “speak the truth” on that score, too. Netanyahu, for his part, has been warning for 15 years that Iran’s fanaticism coupled with its nuclear ambitions pose an existential threat to the Jewish state. Many Arabs fear Iran no less than Israel does. Relieving the Palestine problem could create a front of Middle East moderation resisting Iranian subversion and terror. That tempting scenario is predicated on the international community, US-led, interdicting the centrifuges spinning at Natanz by diplomatic, economic and, if needs be, the threat of military means.

The “grand bargain” is available. The moment is right. Obama will be hailed by history if he can summon up the statesmanship to seize it.

David Landau is the former editor of Haaretz and is writing a biography of Ariel Sharon

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Jessy Tolkan: On the environment

He is the secret weapon in environment success

Community organisers, before Obama, were widely perceived as bleeding-heart neighbourhood zealots or members of fringe groups born out of college classrooms. Today grassroots political participation has become a lifestyle choice worn as a badge of honour, especially among the generation coming of age around the millennium, and there is probably no greater long-term victory in the president’s short tenure than this empowerment of these people.

In March, 12,000 young people descended upon Washington for Power Shift 2009 to demand the passage of a strong climate bill. It’s a year into the presidency and we don’t have a climate bill to celebrate, but that doesn’t mean the administration has been without its victories. From fuel efficiency standards, to a stimulus packed full of resources to spur the green economy, to his recent commitment to make federal buildings beacons of efficiency, there’s no doubt that we’ve seen action in the right direction.

This is a president who ran on hope, and the hopes of the world are wrapped up in his willingness to undertake the boldest change we’ve ever seen in order to secure our climate’s future. He’s done many of the right little things, but we’re still waiting for him to push Congress to act on the linchpin of all our efforts: aggressive, immediate legislation on reducing CO² emissions. He was relatively quiet this summer when the Waxman-Markey Bill was in the House of Representatives. He has also yet to commit to attending the UN meeting in Copenhagen, after eight – if not 16 – years of doubt as to whether the US is ready to play ball.

It has been a crowded year in terms of the issues the US has faced, but leadership on climate and energy is at the core of solving our problems. By setting a strong renewable energy standard, we’ll send a message to the market that America is open for business. By gaining energy independence, we’ll be able to shift our fiscal and moral responsibilities back to some of our pressing domestic issues. Instead of waiting its turn in a long line of priorities that are, decidedly, all urgent, putting climate and energy front and centre is a strategy that Obama needs to follow sooner rather than later.

The Senate is holding hearings this month that could lead to further legislation. Copenhagen will lead, we hope, to an ambitious and binding global deal. Obama remains the secret weapon in our success. A year after the election, it’s wonderful to no longer be fighting those who deny climate change is real or urgent, and to be on the verge of meaningful legislation.

Jessy Tolkan is executive director of the Energy Action Coalition

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Farzana Shaik: On Pakistan

Good for the world, but not for Pakistan

In the midst of the worldwide euphoria that greeted the election of president Obama, one commentator in Pakistan struck a note of caution. Obama might be good for the world, but he could be bad for us. A year on, those words have come back to haunt Pakistan’s long troubled relations with the United States. For even as President Obama basks in the warm glow of international endorsement, his stock has fallen sharply in Pakistan.

There could be no clearer demonstration of this than the visit this week by US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Billed as a concerted diplomatic offensive to woo an increasingly hostile Pakistani public, Clinton has since headed home nursing wounds inflicted by a series of bruising encounters with angry Pakistanis. Opposition politicians, students, journalists, religious groups and tribesmen – all rounded on her, outraged by a war they believe has been foisted on them by the US and by the unjustifiably high price it has exacted from their country.

Indeed, it is precisely the fair price that Pakistan expects from the United States in exchange for its support that is at issue. Obama appeared to understand this. Within weeks of taking office he oversaw one of the most ambitious US economic and social aid packages ever devised for Pakistan under civilian administration. Totalling an estimated $7.5bn over five years, it was recently passed by Congress as the Enhancement Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009.

The widely anticipated legislation has since been strongly condemned by them. Criticism has focused on a set of so-called “conditionalities” attached to the US aid package. Judged to be an infringement of Pakistan’s national sovereignty, they require Pakistan’s military to be brought under “effective civilian control”, militant bases on its territory to be dismantled and the rules of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime to be respected.

Although these terms are no different from the stated objectives of Pakistan’s current leadership, the prevailing climate of bitterness has reinforced the impression that the US is meting out shabby treatment to a key ally. Anti-US sentiment has been additionally fuelled by opposition to the US aid package from Pakistan’s military high command. Long accustomed to privileged treatment from the US, it has taken a dim view of Obama’s perceived attempts to get its soldiers to wage “America’s war” on the cheap.

There is no question that Pakistan has become more prominent in President Obama’s foreign policy priorities. A sense that he favours an ‘even-handed’ approach with India would help smooth diplomatic feathers and strengthen his regional policy.

Farzana Shaikh is an associate fellow of Chatham House and author of Making Sense of Pakistan.

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Patricia Williams: On race

The volume of abuse has not shaken him

The honeymoon has ended. While Barack Obama’s overall popularity remains relatively high, the right wing of our nation has become well-organised and noisy, voicing grievances in bitter terms that leave little doubt that the US is not yet the haven of “post-racial” harmony for which most of us yearn.

For much of recent history, American racism has been expressed in terms that stereotyped black people variously as criminal, buffoonish, bestial, or less intelligent. This typecasting remains a powerful legacy; and the divide it still imposes is evident in the vastly disproportionate rates of incarceration, residential segregation, employment, and educational opportunity.

In addition to the general enormity of the problem, however, tackling racism poses a serious Catch-22 for the president. Even for many who voted for him, Obama has been boxed in by an historically less-visible sort of racial stereotype: that of “the good one” — the exceptional person of colour who proves the rule, the well-scrubbed model minority, the socially acceptable brown face, the black person white people love to love because loving him proves that there is no hatred in our hearts. This particular configuration is heavily dependant upon the anointed black person remaining “above” race at all costs: talking about race as little as possible, remaining apart from the masses, staying silent as the lonely figurehead of that conferred exceptionalism.

But even if he wanted to, the president of the US cannot remain apart from racialised frays – they are too much part of our domestic life. And so whenever Obama attempts to address real racial disparity, he risks being perceived as having broken the covenant of the “post-race” ideal. Perhaps predictably, the backlash to his not being that imaginary icon of race-less-ness has been significant and constraining. If, for example, one listens to Fox News virtually anything Obama does is depicted as “playing the race card” or “reverse racism” or “racial favouritism.” Not only is he a “racist” by this measure, he is constantly compared to Hitler, to Stalin and to Osama Bin Laden.

It’s a truly perplexing development: fear of “the black man” has been seamlessly flipped from nightmares about the rebellious dispossessed thug, to those of the too-powerful, much-too-smart-for-his-own-good, oppressively dispossessing autocrat. Indeed, in the alternative universe of Fox News, President Obama is the new face of racism itself, a man who supposedly hates white people and is out to take away their guns, indoctrinate their children, and kill old people.

It’s hard to have a sensible conversation about anything in a climate polarised in this manner. It is one reason that rational discussion of health care has become so unfortunately side-tracked by ridiculous non-issues and imaginary fears. At the same time, President Obama has remained steadfastly engaged with the jobs at hand. If his address of racial disparity has, out of indubitable political necessity, remained oblique, his grace in dealing with all constituencies, no matter how hostile, has been salutary and exemplary. His message has remained consistent and reasonable through all the surrounding nonsense. As he first posited in The Audacity of Hope, tackling structural racism is something that all Americans will be better for. The goal of this collective enterprise must be to enable all Americans to feel safe not only within our various racial groupings or ethnic enclaves, but also and equally comfortable in the uniquely multi-faceted human community that is the United States of America.

Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University

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Robert Barro: On the economy

He should stop whining about Bush

The near-term outlook for the US economy has improved substantially since the spring, with a sharp upturn in the stock market and the return of positive growth in real GDP. The probability of a depression, which I estimated to be 25% last March, has now fallen to a low level. The principal policy that avoided a meltdown was the massive governmental assistance to large financial institutions as a way to prevent a repeat of Lehman’s failure of September 2008. This policy, started under Bush and continued under Obama, involved the US Treasury and, increasingly, the Federal Reserve.

In comparison to the intervention, Obama’s well-publicised programmes – the fiscal stimulus package, bailouts of carmakers, cash for clunkers, curbs on imports from China – have played minor roles. These have wasted money and were mistakes and have had little impact on the short-term turnaround.

The medium and long-term economic outlook is not promising. My main concern is that the Obama administration’s remedy for nearly everything is more government. And some proposals involve lots more money over much longer periods. Prominent here are bad ideas about dealing with healthcare, energy and the environment. Also worrying are proposals for additional income redistribution, featuring higher taxes on the “rich” and removal of more people from paying any income tax at all.

Put all this together with the already accumulated budget deficits and you get a serious long-run fiscal problem. The only possibility I see for raising sufficient revenue is a European-style value-added tax, which is comparatively efficient but still a drag on future economic growth.

Another mystery is how the Federal Reserve will unwind its massive infusion of liquidity and corresponding expansion of credit. The Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned remarkably. If the economy grows in a sustained way, with subsiding fears reducing the demand for liquidity, the Fed’s stance will become highly inflationary. Although chairman Ben Bernanke is well aware of this threat, the necessary unwinding of positions is unprecedented and scary. The likely outcome is high inflation within a few years, coupled with a financial system influenced more by politics than economics.

Finally, there is the unusual propensity of the Obama administration to blame its predecessors for “inherited” problems, economic and otherwise. Although I am not a fan of most of Bush’s economic policies, he did begin the intervention that likely staved off a financial implosion. When Bush came to office in 2001, he did not spend a lot of time blaming Clinton for the stock market crash of 2000. It would be nice if Obama and his team stopped whining about Bush’s supposed failures, accepted the economy as their responsibility and focused on implementing sound policies.

Robert Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard and a fellow of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

-The Guardian

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