Obama’s Dilemma: Electoral Realities and U.S. Foreign Policy
Stratfor does not normally involve itself in domestic American politics. Our focus is on international affairs, and American politics, like politics everywhere, is a passionate business, and the inevitable vilification from all sides that follows any mention of American politics is both inevitable and unpleasant. Nevertheless, it’s our job to chronicle the unfolding of the international system and the fact that the United States is moving deeply into the election cycle will effect American international behavior, and therefore the international system.
The United States remains the center of gravity of the international system. The sheer size of its economy (regardless of its growth rate) and the power of its military (regardless of its current problems) make the United States unique in the international system. Even more important, no single leader of the world is as significant, for good or bad, as the American President. That makes the American presidency, in its broadest sense, a matter that cannot be ignored in studying the international system.
The American system was designed to be a phased process. By separating the selection of the legislative system from the Presidential, the founders created a system that did not allow for sudden shifts in personnel. Unlike Parliamentary systems in which the legislature and the leadership are intimately linked, the institutional and temporal uncoupling of the system was intended to control the passing passions by leaving at least 2/3s of the Senate unchanged even in a Presidential election year, which always coincides with the election of the House of Representatives. Coupled with Senatorial rules, it makes it difficult for the President to govern on domestic affairs. Changes in the ideological tenor of the system are years in coming, and when they come they stay a long time. Mostly, however, the system is in gridlock. Jefferson said that a government that governs least is the best. The United States has a vast government that rests on a system in which significant change is not impossible, but demands a level of consensus over a period of time that rarely exists.
This is particularly true in domestic politics, where the complexity is compounded by the uncertainty of the legislative branch. Consider that the Health Care legislation, passed through major compromise is still in doubt, pending court rulings that thus far have been contradictory. All of this would have delighted the founders and constantly trapped Presidents, who have frequently shrugged of their limits in domestic politics in favor of action in the international realm, where their freedom for maneuver is much greater, again as the founders intended.
The point of this is that all Presidents live within the framework that Obama is operating in. First, none begins with a clean slate. All begin with the unfinished work of the prior administration. Thus George W. Bush began his Presidency with an al Qaeda whose planning and implementation for 9-11 was already well underway. some of the aQ operatives who would die in the attack were already in the country – would say that explicitly So, like all presidents, Obama assumed the Presidency with his agenda already laid out.
Obama had a unique problem, which was his campaign. This divided into two parts. The first was his agenda, which focused on ending the Iraq warand reversing social policies in place since Ronald Reagan became President in 1981. By the time Obama was in office, the process of withdrawal from Iraq was underway leaving him the option of shifting the terminal date. The historic reversal that he wanted to execute, starting with health care reform, confronted the realities of September 2008 and the American financial crisis. His Iraq policy was in place by inauguration day while his social programs were colliding with the financial crisis.
Obama’s campaign was about more than particular policies. He ran on a platform that famously promised change and hope. His tremendous political achievement was in framing those concepts in such a way that it was interpreted by voters to mean precisely what they wanted it to mean without committing him to specific policies. To the anti-war faction it meant that the wars would end. To those concerned about unilateralism it meant that unilateralism would be replaced by multilateralism. To those concerned by growing inequality it meant that he would end inequality. To those who were concerned about industrial jobs going overseas, it meant that those jobs would be saved. To those who hated Guantanamo, it meant that Guantamo would be closed.
Obama created a coalition whose expectations of what Obama would do were shaped by them and projected on Obama. In fact, Obama never quite said what his supporters thought he did. His supporters thought they heard that he was anti-war. He never said that. He simply said that he opposed Iraq and thought Afghanistan should be waged. His strategy was to allow his followers to believe what they wanted so long as they voted for him, and they obliged him. Now this is not unique to Obama. It is how Presidents get to elected. What was unique was how well he did it, and the problem it caused once he became President.
It must first be remembered that contrary to the excitement of the time and faulty memories today, Obama did not win an overwhelming victory. About 48 percent of the public voted for someone other than Obama. It was certainly a solid victory, but it was neither a landslide nor a mandate for his programs. He won the election by just a bit more than Bush was re-elected in 2004. But the excitement generated by his victory created the sense of victory that his numbers didn’t support.
The second problem he had was that he had no programmatic preparation for the reality he faced. September 2008 changed everything in the sense that it created financial and economic realities that ran counter to the policies he envisioned. He shaped those policies during the primaries and after the convention and they were based on assumptions that were no longer true after September 2008. Indeed, it could be argued that he was elected because of September 2008. Prior to the meltdown, John McCain had a small lead over Obama. He took over the lead only after the meltdown. Given that the crisis emerged on the Republican’s watch, this made perfect sense. But shifting policy priorities was hard both because of political commitments, because the extremities of the crisis might not have been fully appreciated and simply because of inertia.
Obama’s policies did not differ in principle from Bush’s and indeed, many of the key figures had served in the Federal Reserve and elsewhere under the Bush Administration. The Bush administrations solution was to print and insert money into financial institutions in order to stabilize the system. By the time Obama came into power, it became clear to his team that the insertion was insufficient but had to be increased. In addition, in order to sustain the economy, the policy that had been in place during Bush years of maintaining low interest rates through monetary easing was extended and intensified. To a great extent it was the Bush years extended to their logical conclusion. Whether Bush would have gone for the stimulus package is not clear, but not inconceivable.
Obama essentially pursued the Bush strategy of stabilizing the banks with the expectation that a stable banking system was both indispensible and would in itself stimulate the economy by creating liquidity. Whether it did or didn’t, the strategy created the beginnings of Obama’s political problem. He drew substantial support from populists on the left, and suspicion from populists on the right. The latter already hostile to Bush’s policy coalesced into the Tea Party. But his problem was not there. It was that his policies weakened his support among Democratic populists, as his policies both seemed to favor the financial elite and were at odds with what they believed he stood for. The division between what he actually said and what his supporters thought they heard began to widen. Where the health care battle solidified his opposition among those who would oppose him anyway, the continued response to the financial crisis both solidified opposition among Republicans and weakened his support among Democrats.
This was coupled with his foreign policy. Among Democrats, the anti-war faction was a significant bloc. Most democrats did not support Obama for anti-war reasons as their primary motivator, but enough did make this the priority issue that he could not win if he lost this bloc. This bloc believed two things. The first was that the war in Iraq was unjustified and harmful and second, that it emerged from an administration that was singularly insensitive to the world at large and to the European alliance in principle particular?. They supported Obama because they assumed not only that he would end wars—as well as stop torture and prison without trials—but would re-found American foreign policy on new principles.
Obama’s decision to dramatically increase forces in Afghanistan while merely modifying the Bush administration’s timeline for withdrawing from Iraq, caused unease within the Democratic party. But two steps that Bush took held his position. First, one of Obama’s first steps was to reach out to the Europeans. It was the expectation that this would increase European support for U.S. foreign policy. The Europeans of course were enthusiastic about Obama, as the Noble Peace Prize showed. But where Obama believed that given his willingness to listen to the Europeans, they would be forthcoming with help, it was the European expectation that Obama would understand the Europeans better and not ask for help.
The relationship was no better under Obama than under Bush. It wasn’t personality or ideology that mattered. It was simply that Germany, as the prime example, had different interests than the Americans. This of course was compounded by the different views and approaches to the global financial crisis. Where the Americans were still interested in Afghanistan, for the Europeans that issue was buried under the financial crisis. U.S.-European relations remained frozen.
There was then the speech to the Islamic world made in Cairo, where his supporters heard him trying to make amends for Bush’s actions, while many Muslims heard the same unwillingness to break with Israel or end the wars. His supporters heard conciliation. The Islamic world heard inflexibility.
The European response to Obama the President as opposed to Obama the candidate running against George Bush, slowly reverberated among his supporters. The failure to end the war not only not end it, but double down and surge forces in Afghanistan and the continued hostility toward the United States from the Islamic world reverberated among the Democratic left that was concerned with such matters. Add to that the failure to close Guantanamo, and a range of other issues important to them concerning the war on terror, and support for Obama crumpled.
His primary victory, health care reform, was the major foundation block of an edifice that was never built. Indeed, the reform bill is caught in the courts and its future is as uncertain as when it was caught in Congress. The Republicans, as expected agree on nothing other than his defeat. The Democrats will support him, but how enthusiastically is the question.
Obama’s support now stands at 41 percent. The failure point for a President’s second term?lurks around 35 percent. It is hard to come back from there. Obama is not there yet. The loss of another 6 points would come from his democratic base (which is why 35 is the failure point; when you lose a chunk of your own base, you are in deep trouble). At this point, however, the President is far less interested in foreign policy than in holding his base together and retaking the middle. He did not win by a large enough margin to be able to lose any of his core constituencies. He may hope that his Republican challenger will alienate the center, but he can’t count on that. He has to capture his center and hold his left.
That means first that he must focus on domestic policy. That is where the public is focused and even the Afghan war or U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is not touching nerves in the center. His problem is two-fold. First, it is not clear that he can get anything past Congress. He can then argue that it was Congress fault, but the Republicans can run against Congress as well. Second, it is not clear what he would propose. The Republic right can’t be redeemed. But what can Obama propose that will please the Democratic core and hold the center. The Democratic core wants taxes. The center doesn’t oppose taxes (it is merely uneasy) but is extremely sensitive that the taxes not be eaten up by new spending—something the Democratic center supports. Obama is trapped between two groups he must have, but who view the world with differently enough that bridging the gap is impossible.
The founders gave the United States a government that, no matter how large it gets, can’t act on domestic policy without a powerful consensus. There is none and therefore there can’t be action. Foreign policy isn’t currently resonating with the American public, therefore daring initiatives there will tend to fail to achieve the domestic political end. Obama has to hold together a coalition that is inherently fragmented by their very different understandings of what his Presidency was about. This coalition has weakened substantially. Obama’s attention must be on holding it together. He cannot resurrect the foreign policy part of it at this point. He must bet on the fact that they have nowhere else to go. What his focus must be on is domestic policy crafted to hold his base and center together long enough to win an election.
The world, therefore, is facing at least 14 months with the United States being at best reactive and at worse non-responsive to events. Obama has never been a foreign policy President; events and I suspect proclivity has always drawn him to domestic matters. But between now and the election, the political configuration of the United States, and the dynamics of his Presidency, forces him away from foreign policy.
At a time when the Persian Gulf is trying coming to terms with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the power of Iran, when Palestinians and Israelis are facing another crisis over UN recognition would mention the Israel/Turkey/Egypt shenanigans, when the future of Europe is unknown, when North Africa is unstable and Syria is in crisis, not to mention U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan—this creates opportunities for countries to create realities that in the long run might not be in American interests. There is at least 14 months for regional powers to act with confidence without concern of the United States.
The point of this analysis is to try to show the dynamics that have led the United States to this position, and to sketch the international landscape in broad strokes. The U.S. President will not be deeply engaged in the world for more than a year.
The President will have to cope with events pressed on him. He may undertake initiatives, such as over Israel, but it will have such a large political component to it that it will have great difficulty coping with the realities on the ground. The world knows this, of course. The question will be how and whether they take advantage of it.