Without doubt, Barack Obama has pulled off a brilliant victory
and even those who dislike him cannot fail to acknowledge it. True,
it wasn’t a landslide: in fact, he is the first president to be
re-elected with a reduced majority (52.9% and 9.5 million votes
more than John McCain in 2008; 50.3% and 3 million more votes than
Romney today). But a clear — indeed, given the facts, a stunning
— Obama victory it remains.
In 2008, Obama had called George W. Bush “unpatriotic” for
harvesting a $4 trillion federal deficit in 8 years. What word,
then, to apply to a president who has
inflated it by nearly $6 trillion in half the time? Add to that
some grim facts:
- The national debt now exceeds the entire annual output of the
U.S. economy.
- Unemployment is higher today (7.9%) than when he took office
(7.8%), remaining on his watch at over 8% for a post-war record of
43 consecutive months and even today above a 7% threshold with
which no post-war president — until this election— had ever
achieved re-election.
- An unpopular signature legislative package: Obamacare,
opposed as recently as June by 56% of Americans.
- High gas prices,
higher on average than under George W. Bush and more than
double since Obama took office.
- An unprecedented U.S. credit rating downgrade by Standard &
Poor’s and Egan-Jones from AAA to AA+ (August 2011) and by
Egan-Jones to AA (April 2012) and to AA- (September 2012).
- An American public which
believes 52% to 46% that the country is headed in the wrong
direction.
Why was a record of economic blight and general discontent
insufficient to unseat Obama?
Obama ran a highly negative campaign, correctly deducing that he
could maintain his coalition of constituencies even as he alienated
nearly half the country with his resort to class warfare. In this
he was aided by Romney’s tactical mistakes and an Obama-compliant
media.
Romney, depicted relentlessly by the Obama campaign as an
out-of-touch, stone-hearted, job-exporting Bourbon and robber baron
(who has actually given vast sums to
charitable causes, including the
fortune he inherited), made the tactical error of doing little
to counter the fusillade of character assassination during the
vital May-July period. He dealt with confidence-eroding allegations
about his time at Bain Capital in a dilatory fashion. Achieving a
stellar first presidential debate performance, he failed to press
his advantage in the two subsequent debates.
Obama also calculated extremely well how to leverage the
American demographic shift of recent years. He was able to keep the
constituencies he attracted in 2008 with promises and hand-outs.
Offensive utterances on rape by Republicans Senate candidates
Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin eroded the female vote for Romney.
And, perhaps most importantly, Romney faltered not only tactically
but strategically when it came to the fast growing Latino
vote.
Romney failed to endorse existing Republican proposals —
Rick Perry’s or
Marco Rubio’s version of the Dream Act, permitting foreign-born
children of illegal immigrants to achieve rights and legality —
which could have commanded greater Latino support, not least in the
swing-states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Ohio. Instead, Obama
swept the Latino vote in these states by 74%, 60%, 80% and 82%
respectively. This meant that Romney won only 27% of the Latino
vote — a drop from John McCain’s lamentable figure of 31% in 2008
and miles short from George W. Bush’s 44% in 2004.
Then there are the intangibles. American publics like to
re-elect their presidents. Nine incumbents in the last century who
sought a fresh term — Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry
Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald
Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — got one. Only five did
not: William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Gerald
Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992.
All but Taft lost largely because of economic woes on their
respective watches.
Obama avoided this fate by plausibly passing off the chronic
sluggishness of the economy to George W. Bush, while taking credit
for the auto bailout (unlike other stimulus measures, largely
popular,
according to the Pew Research Center) that was actually
initiated by Bush and which in fact may have done little short-term
good and much
long-term harm. Obama also adroitly postponed implementation
until 2013 of his most painful and costly measures, like Obamacare
and the termination of the revenue-producing
Bush tax cuts. This permitted both measures to appear at once
positive and abstract — a cause for debate perhaps, but scarcely
for resentment on account of hardship.
Obama will undoubtedly see re-election as a mandate to implement
his program. But if the people’s vote is the criterion, then the
picture is ambiguous: as the Chicago Tribune, which
endorsed Obama in 2008 and again this year,
observes, “The same voters who gave Obama four more years in
office also elected a divided Congress, sticking with the dynamic
that has made it so hard for the president to advance his agenda.
Democrats retained control of the Senate; Republicans kept their
House majority.”
But expect Obama to persist on his own track, whatever the calls
for bipartisanship. Obama entered the scene in 2008 with talk of
hope and change, “change you can believe in.” Many conservatives
thought this vacuous, but they were mistaken. Obama meant what he
said. It would be highly unusual if he differed from most
presidents in aspiring to two, game-changing terms.
Obama
said in 2010 that “I’d rather be a really good one-term
president than a mediocre two-term president.” But now he has
secured his second term and, in retrospect, few — perhaps only
actor Matt
Damon — thought one term “with balls” was preferable. Obama
seems to have reasoned with a subtlety and patience that eluded Mr.
Damon that two terms were preferable, indeed vital: better to lay
the groundwork in his first and follow through in his second with
all that is sweeping and expensive when he is beyond electoral
recall.
For all this, Obama’s record made his re-election a tall order.
His campaign seems to have exhibited genius in getting his
supporters to vote where it mattered most. And his triumph is even
greater when one recalls the slump from his Pied Piper popularity
in 2008, one that even this election confirmed: in 2008, Obama won
69,456,897 votes to McCain’s 59,934,81. This time, in a country
that has grown by about eight million people since Obama assumed
office, he won eight million fewer votes: only 61,112,143
to Romney’s 58,122,514.
Obama managed to dramatically minimize — and Republicans failed
to capitalize on — his failures and the lack of enthusiasm they
engendered. Republicans made tactical and strategic mistakes and
failed to convert lack of enthusiasm for Obama into enthusiasm for
their own candidate, something which should have been there for the
taking. All in all, a brilliant victory for Obama.
