FOREIGN FOCUS - America's angry voters

John Rapley

POOR BARACK Obama must spend his spare moments watching old videos of election night 2008. Remember that feeling? He sure won't be getting it now.

Later tomorrow, barring polling errors on a scale beyond 'Dewey Defeats Truman' proportions, the American news networks will announce that the Republicans have retaken, en masse, the House of Representatives. The Democrats will probably hang onto Senate, but by their fingertips.

A lot of the new congressmen are coming in with a fiercely anti-Obama agenda. The mood in Washington will grow decidedly testy, and the remnants of the hope that President Obama's election might usher in a new era in American politics will evaporate pretty quickly.

Mind you, Americans seem to have turned attention deficit disorder into a journalistic ethic. After all, this is a country in which a Paris Hilton perp walk merits live television coverage. We were told that 2008 changed the landscape permanently. We will hear that 2010 has changed it back permanently. And no doubt, 2012 will do it again. Call it ephemeral permanence.

So one should probably take with a pinch of salt all the bold declarations we will hear tomorrow, when there will no doubt be lots of analogies to earthquakes, hurricanes, seismic shifts, and even Chicago Cubs' victories. The results will be bad for President Obama, but they will also stick to form. In the US, the governing party generally does suffer setbacks during midterm elections. When those elections take place in the midst of a recession, that tendency is accentuated. Throw in that, in his first two years of office, President Obama's legislative agenda was unusually ambitious - not to mention successful, at least in terms of the targets set and reached - and you have a baked-in recipe for an electoral reaction.

Still, there is no diminishing both the anger of President Obama's foes, and the disappointment of his supporters. Polls reveal that conservatives are energised and angry, independents are drifting rightwards, and liberals are going to stay home. Even some traditional Democratic constituencies, like women, look like they may join the tide against the Democrats.

The anger has contradictory expressions, but appears to have a common root. Liberals will say President Obama was too timid in government, conservatives that he is turning America into a socialist dictatorship. But most agree that America has been taken over by a small, unelected elite.

And they may be right. If President Obama had one big failing, it was that - at least for a time - he turned his economic policy largely over to a small circle of individuals with close ties to Wall Street. Informed opinion agrees that the massive bank bailout was a necessary evil, one of those things you do while holding your nose, just because it has to be done.

Responsibility

But the subsequent events were not cast in stone. For many months after the bailout, the future of the banking system depended largely on Washington. The White House had all the cards. It could have enacted reforms that imposed a degree of responsibility on the banks, commensurate with the claims they were making on the national treasury.

It did not, and waved off demands to impose new and stricter rules. The financial system returned to solvency, and bankers began paying themselves large bonuses once more. And when the White House finally came around to tabling its reform legislation, lo and behold, the banks said, "no thanks, we're good" and walked away.

Some Americans are outraged at what they see as a corporate takeover. Others think big government that spends without accountability is the problem. Yet others find it galling that anyone can walk away from their debts, while honest folk can't pay their bills.

Disagree though they may on interpretations, they are all angry. President Obama, for all his virtues, will become the target for their rage, because it was his call to trust Wall Street with power. The morning after, the best thing he can do is to slay a sacrificial lamb or two, and offer it as a peace gesture to the angry gods that are the American people.

John Rapley is president of the Caribbean Policy Research Institute, an independent research think tank affiliated with the University of the West Indies, Mona. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.