The U.S.: The State of the Country

The prospects for U.S. President Barack Obama, who is hosting world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, look gloomy. There has perhaps not been any other president in American history that has lost popular support as fast as President Obama — and this has happened even before the halfway point of his first term in the White House. To make things worse, a lot of national and foreign observers of American politics predict that President Obama will suffer yet another blow should the Democrats lose their majority in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

Although the United States’ competency in dealing with issues occupying the world agenda has been increasingly questioned, it is former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s statement in a campaign address that tells us a lot more about why people have started to view President Obama in a relatively poor light these days: “Economic performance comes first.” The 3 percent economic growth predicted for the U.S. economy this year has already been revised to a mere 1.5 percent. More and more people have given up hope that the global economic crisis will be overcome, and with this pessimism comes an increasingly critical view of the president. Therefore, while President Obama retains his popularity in other countries, his popular support among Americans is declining.

It is all about economic performance because the president has demonstrated his courage to face particularly deep-rooted problems in various facets of life in the United States. He managed to have the thorny issue of health care and social security reform pass. The actions and steps the U.S. government has taken in the financial sector have also been timely and congruous. The president did not neglect the problems in American education and it seems he will get positive results in that area as well. He was certainly aware that the two wars the U.S. was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan put significant amounts of pressure on the U.S. economy. Hence, he fulfilled his earlier promise and withdrew from Iraq. It seems he will also live up to his word and withdraw from Afghanistan toward the end of 2011.

In light of his determinate actions that sometimes even run the risk of alienating major sectors in the United States, the president does not have a personal ambition to be elected to office for another term. It seems to me that he wants to engage in various problems that have accumulated over the years and has put dealing with these problems at the top of his priority list, even with the midterm elections around the corner. There has been arguably no other American president in the last decades that has been so focused on real policy issues rather than relying on empty political rhetoric.

It seems that neither politics nor politicians appreciate Obama. The American political system exacted President Obama to obtain the backing of the U.S. Congress; yet, any time his path to realizing essential reforms for his country has cut across Congress, he has had to face continuous obstructions. He needed congressional support to be able to decrease the staggering unemployment rate and manage the overall economy, but he does not even enjoy the backing of the Democrats on some issues. In the face of global climate change, for instance, he would like to commit his country as a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, but Congress blocks his way there as well. His staunch opponents would even barricade him from actually enforcing the social security reform he has just managed to have passed.

As I said before, his popular support at home is declining and people feel that he is struggling in almost every area he has his hands on. Lately, the area he has been struggling in most visibly regards, of course, the American Muslims and the U.S.’s relations with the Islamic world. As we all remember, although he had first declared that American Muslims, like any other American citizens, had the right to freely practice their religion and hence were fully entitled to build what has been dubbed in the U.S. media the “Ground Zero Mosque,” he later felt obliged to water down that statement. The promises he made back in his infamous Cairo speech have long been forgotten.

When the current Middle East peace talks come to an end, it is very likely that the failure due to Israel’s attitude will just be another item in the list of “Obama’s unfulfilled promises to the Muslim world.” Israel is causing Obama a great deal of headache because Israel has been using Obama’s existence at the White House and the widespread perception among Americans that “President Obama is very soft on Islam” for its own interests. Yet, as we also all know, Obama’s hands are tied to exert pressure on Israel thanks to his own political dilemmas. If I were to remind you of how often I visit the U.S. and then tell you that “I have never seen Americans that desperate before,” I am sure you would easily understand this situation I have been talking about.