(c) jamesomalley

Welcome to The Vibe’s weekly debate! This week, President Barack Obama celebrated his first year in charge by losing a filibuster proof Senate. The Republicans and Scott Brown delivered the President the worst birthday present imaginable, and in doing so completed a challenging year for Obama. So, what has he achieved, and what do we make of the President? Is this change that we can still believe in? Or are we going to witness a Carter style fall from grace? This week on the debate, sees Chris McCarthy level the blame for the difficulties this year at the feet of the Republican party and its partisan politics. John Spence points the finger at Obama himself, for trying to be too much to too many. Whilst I myself take to the podium to argue that it is in fact, the voters, the public, the media and the people who are to blame for Obama’s difficult first year in power.

Change V The Republicans : Chris McCarthy

It was just over a year ago that millions of Americans, and people across the world, allowed themselves to abandon despair and depression at a world bitterly divided and economically sick, to embrace instead the hope and optimism that was presented by one Barack Hussein Obama. What happened over the next 365 days left many deflated and despondent. Are they right to be so morose; has President Obama’s first year in office been so devoid of accomplishment as to merit the precipitous drop in his approval ratings?

President Obama was never going to ‘fix’ America in his first year, let alone the world; he has no ability to heal the sick, cure the blind and walk on water. Lofty, unachievable, borderline ridiculous expectations were placed on the President from an electorate and a country seemingly tired of partisan conflict and endless wars.

We remember Barack Obama, the presidential candidate, for his soaring rhetoric and command of the stage. Deeper inspection, however, reveals that Obama was often very moderate, centrist and serious in tone during the majority of his speeches. It was those final few rousing minutes that caught the attention of the media and the country alike and had so many enthralled by his presence.

Nevertheless, the bar had been set, and the steeper the expectation the harder the fall. Perception is one thing however, accomplishment another. The President moved quickly on closing Guantanamo Bay (and other CIA ‘black sites’) and while he will miss his self-imposed deadline of the 22^nd January to shut the camp down, it remains a welcome contrast to the dismissive approach to liberty and freedom of the preceding Bush Government.

The ending of restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research; the lifting of a ban on HIV-positive people entering the US; the abandonment of a missile-defence shield in Europe that facilitated improved relations with Russia and encourages hope for a new Nuclear Arms Treaty; a genuine effort to address rising tensions between America and the Middle East with a speech to the Turkish Parliament, an interview with the al-Arabiya network early in his Presidency and the strongest condemnation yet from a US President of Israel’s continued encroachment on Palestinian land.

These are but some of the tangible accomplishments of President Obama’s first year and hope should still remain for the future. Major, unprecedented healthcare reform remains tantalizingly close and the US economic juggernaut is beginning to splutter again. The largest obstacle to the President’s reformist agenda –and a challenge that will only become tougher after the mid-term elections and now that the Massachusetts Senatorial seat has been lost by the Democrats – has been an obdurate, deeply partisan Republican Party in both houses.

The Grand Old Party faced a key choice after their heavy electoral college defeat during the 2008 Presidential election; broaden their camp to welcome and entice more moderate voters or pull-up the drawbridge and retreat to their conservative base. For several reasons they chose the latter and have since done everything possible to block, undermine and dilute the progressive legislative programme that Obama and the Democrats have sought to introduce.

It’s not the efforts of the President that we should be left feeling so despondent about; his accomplishments are plentiful and his vision attractive. It is the bellicose, self-serving attitude of Republican Senators and Congressman that we should really be paying our attention to for an explanation of why America hasn’t got more things right in the last 12 months.

Author of his own downfall : John Spence

To quote the 44^th American President’s ideological opposite, Donald Rumsfeld, “If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.”  That single sentence cuts to the heart of the problems Barack Obama faces on the first anniversary of his assuming office.

From his announcement of his participation in the Democratic primaries, way back in February 2007, right up to the present day Obama continues to attempt to find bipartisan solutions to America’s, and the world’s, most pressing problems.  That, in and of itself, is obviously a very laudable goal.  However, politically speaking, it is utter folly and a strategic blind-spot that he and his advisors have failed to acknowledge and rectify.

However, his problems aren’t entirely of his own making.  He had no control over the financial bust he inherited, but has had considerable control over the response.  That there has been no overnight resuscitation of the economy due to his policy is no fault of his either; it is a prevalent culture that seeks instant satisfaction at little cost in all things.  Nor did he do anything to create the War on Terror, another mess he has had to clean up, but his attempts to do so have alienated some of his core supporters.

His culpability in his own tribulations date back to those early days on the campaign trail; ask the average person what they recall of Obama’s speeches, it is likely to be the ill-defined themes of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and the meaningless mantra of “Yes We Can.”  This lack of clarity allowed the whole spectrum of Democrats from leftists to centrists, as well as many Independents, to project their desires onto him as a candidate, hopes that have obviously proven to be impossible to fulfil to everyone’s satisfaction.  That Obama and his team have allowed supporters to make assumptions about his policies has, again, been a major error.

Team Obama have also been culpable in not recognising the dynamics controlling the Republican opposition.  The emergence of the ‘Tea Party’ movement, fired by the right-wing rhetoric of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, has in many ways left the GOP in the background as the organising group for right-wingers.  Quite hypocritically, these movements have cast Obama as a ‘socialist’ who has shifted American politics away from the centre, when it is the Tea Party movement and the attack-dogs at Fox News and talk radio that have shifted the opposition rightward.  Meanwhile, Obama has tried to do business with Republican politicians who will match the rightward shift of their constituents as a matter of self-preservation in mid-term election year.  This policy has been an abject failure, and any opportunity for the Democrats to rectify this has been lost with the Massachusetts seat.

Obama’s final self-inflicted wound has been the pre-election positioning of himself as a figure that transcends politics.  Given that when he was elected he would always have had to do the deals and glad the hands that make Washington work, just like every other President, it was simply irresponsible for him to allow people to believe he could somehow lead without ‘doing politics’.

It is little wonder then that, according to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Centre, the President is hemorrhaging support not only from Democrats and centrist Republicans but, crucially, from Independents, whose approval of him has almost halved inside a year.

Great expectations, false expectations : David Gold

Allow me the slightly pretentious step of quoting myself, from back in June, during the Obama honeymoon. “Let’s not place too much pressure on him, because it is impossible to expect miracles from any man.”

Clearly most of Obama’s voters weren’t reading this. But it is pretty much the problem Obama has come to face. There was this sense of belief that Obama was some mystical force of political magnitude, who transcended all, dragged those on the right and left by his side and made things happen.

This was never the case. Obama was anti-Iraq but vehemently pro the effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What happened, was that those on the left believed that he was fundamentally anti-war, and ignored what he said about Afghanistan. In reality, Obama was always just as ready to wage war as any US president; only his approach was different. But that’s not what the public heard.

Looking at the challenges he faces, none can be achieved overnight, or even in a year. The economy is still trying to gather pace after the recession, unemployment hasn’t quite started to reverse its worrying climb of a year ago. Obama’s policies can’t really be judged yet as being a success or failure; the outcome has not happened.

And the same goes for the healthcare reforms that he has staked his first year upon. Pushing through such a monumental change in the Senate is a mammoth task; one that is not beyond him despite the election of Scott Brown. It just means that he will have to make more concessions; do more deals with Republicans, and design the bill in a less partisan fashion.

The issue of Afghanistan marks one of his more significant contributions, adding 30,000 troops to the fight. Once more though, he has failed to gain much support from allies. Half of the troops currently fighting the Taliban are Americans. Whilst they may be expected to shoulder most of the burden, there are some huge countries who could do more, but aren’t. But much like in Vietnam, it may be more important ‘not to lose’ than to ‘win.’

And in the Middle East the situation is little better. Obama has changed his rhetoric, but failed to win Israel’s support, because he has been too weak on the Palestinian leadership. Iran continues its belligerence, whilst North Korea persists with its vague, empty threats. Obama faces the same obstacle that encountered President Kennedy in the 60s. The perception by the other side of weakness in the US, and a subsequent attempt to push them around. Kennedy was a president who couldn’t be pushed, and Obama needs to show that he is made of the same stuff, though his talk and his refusal to rule out war with Iran demonstrates that he is.

Obama has achieved relatively little. But that is no reason for pessimism. Many of his changes  will take years to appear either a success or not. Remember too, that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan achieved relatively little in their first year, before leaving a great legacy. But the other side of the coin is that his efforts to reposition America’s standing mirror the disastrous policies of Jimmy Carter that lead to much of the upheaval that we see today in the Middle East. And to achieve his goals, Obama also requires cooperation with others.

Obama positions himself right down the centre, in the middle of the great war between Democrats and Republicans. This is a divided America, and Obama is a president placing himself in the cazzum that separates the two. A man of genuine and rare intellect, he is burdened by expectation and hope too unrealistic for any man. He is no magician, he never was. But something tells me that he is too intelligent to fail to heed the warnings, and he has the makings still of a 21^st century JFK.

So you’ve read the views, now contribute yours. Let the debate begin!

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