Obama’s Dilemma

Louie Gohmert, a representative from Texas in the House of Representatives, has been active in the media for quite some time. He tossed a bomb many Americans take seriously: Some Islamic terrorist organizations send young pregnant women to the United States to have their babies in order to automatically obtain American citizenship. In twenty years, trained and indoctrinated, they will come back to the United States to set up a fifth column of bloodthirsty terrorists.

An extreme-right commentator, Laura Ingraham, has just published an unethical hatchet job on President Obama. The Obama Diaries has been at the top of bestseller lists since the beginning of July.

A poll from CNN last week stated that 25 percent of Americans firmly believe the president fudged his birth certificate in order to cover up his foreign birth.

Florida is ready to imitate Arizona in adopting a law that gives the police and judges new powers to fight against illegal immigration. Judges will be able to impose heavier fines on illegal immigrants than American citizens.

Last week, a poll showed that for the first time since the election, a majority of Americans don’t have a high approval rating of the president’s performance: 50 percent disapprove, 45 percent approve. And that began the season of political hurricanes, that of all the excess: the mid-term elections, in which the Republicans have chosen their tactic, while the Democrats are no longer clear about where they are.

The Republicans took their stand instantaneously after Obama’s election. Having lost the majority of their moderate elements during the elections, they have placed themselves solidly on the right, determined to prove that the black president doesn’t share the fundamental values of the country. They have still radicalized their discourse in order to not be outdone in matters of conservatism and obstructionism by the Tea Party, the populist movement that swims in a suspect manner between insidious racism and the practice of chasing the witches in the McCarthy era.

The front lines were drawn during the health care reform debate, which was one of the most acrimonious the American Congress has seen in years. In order to counteract the accusations of socialism and even communism that have erupted from every direction, the Democrats and the president have chosen to bend. They have diluted reform, abandoned the idea of a public option and played the bipartisan approach, all without results, except that the reform is now so poorly understood by Americans that a majority oppose it. Stunned, disconcerted and disoriented by the latent racism poorly concealed from conservative forces and by accusations of socialism, the Democrats have chosen to reassure, to appease. The program for change had been consigned to obscurity in an attempt at competence and moderation. Seated between two chairs, wanting to please everyone, the president and his party have disappointed the independents, while not being seduced to the right.

The Republicans, like some vultures, smelled blood. They were not going to moderate their demagogic attacks, even if the president had chosen to keep the Bush tax cuts for the richest citizens in his budget, thus rejecting his campaign promise. That deprives the state of over $70 billion a year, split among 2 percent of the population. Democrats worry about the fear Republicans know how to invent by counting on the political ignorance of a large part of the population.

In the southern states, it is no longer BP who pays the price for the ecological catastrophe; it is the federal government (consequently Obama) who suffers as a result of the regulatory bodies stocked by Bush accomplices who folded to the demands of the large oil companies. In the industrial states, hit hard by the crisis, it is still Obama’s popularity that has taken a dive, even if the stimulus plan that cost so much had been adopted by Bush, and that was essentially to clear the way for the big financial institutions. In spite of the relative success of the automobile industry’s revival by the Obama administration, a 10 percent unemployment rate drags him down.

The Democrats run in every direction like scatterbrained chickens, while the Republicans advance on the enemy like a reinforced formation, spitting fire and machine guns. More and more elected Democrats faced with a doomsday date in November have asked the president not to come in their district.

American politics is a form of sticky goo from which it isn’t easy to extricate oneself. Obama did in 2008 by creating this rainbow coalition of youths disenchanted with traditional politics, along with minorities and independents, by audaciously proposing the courage of change. He has faltered since then. Will he know how to recreate that alliance before November? For the moment, that doesn’t appear to be the case, while it is easy to foresee trouble for the second two years he still has to govern, and will likely have to face a Republican majority in the House, with an obstructionist minority in the Senate.