Obama 2.0 and the Cohabitation Trap

So predictable and at the same time so disconcerting, his “shellacking” of Nov. 2 forces Barack Obama to revise his trajectory. He admitted as much himself this weekend as he began his Asian tour in India. Predictable, since the polls — annoyingly reliable — had been announcing it for several months. Disconcerting, since the fickleness of the American voter — [voting] two years apart — makes any analysis of the votes arduous and any forecast for 2012 peremptory. Some Democrats are attempting to reassure themselves by invoking the precedents set by Reagan and Clinton, who won second terms hands down, two years after a defeat in the midterm elections. But even though the voting rate at 42 percent, in line with the average for midterm elections, distorts somewhat the reading of the results, there is no doubt that Barack Obama’s Nov. 2 suggests a drastic revision. In a way, even though he has done everything to distance himself from it, the “anti-Clinton” will have to draw lessons from “Bill’s change of course,” if he wants to avoid getting bogged down like Jimmy Carter.

“It was a protest vote. People are unhappy about the state of the economy, unhappy about the failure of the president in getting the economy back on track,”* summarizes the political analyst, Stanley Greenberg. For this former adviser to Bill Clinton, those who see an ideological slide of public opinion are mistaken. A simple blip linked to the toxic state of the economy and a transient frustration level? The thesis is seductive. After all, the breakthrough of the tea party populist movement in Congress remains relatively modest. And the anti-deficit Republican manifesto does not shine through either its originality or realism. However, judging by the magnitude of seat transfers in the Senate — the most important since 1948 — it certainly feels like the reach of the defeat goes beyond that of a warning shot. According to the detailed analysis in The New York Times on Nov. 7, the Democratic Party lost ground with most demographic groups: women, retirees, young graduates, not counting the “independents” (center-ground voters), who played a key role in Barack Obama’s victory two years ago and who have massively gone over to the Republican candidates. For the first time since 1982, a majority of women have voted for the Republican Party, when the Democrats enjoyed a 14-point lead with the female voters two years ago. It is without doubt that the Nov. 2 election is as much “his” defeat as that of the Democratic representatives.

Against what the editor of Time, Fareed Zakaria, calls ironically the “third Republican revolution” (after that of Reagan in 1981 and Newt Gingrinch in 1994), Barack Obama has explicitly acknowledged this weekend that he will need to proceed with “midterm corrections and adjustments.” He went as far as calling “healthy” the renewing of part of Congress, even though his majority has suffered greatly from it. In an interview with The New York Times two weeks before the elections — to better prepare the reframing of “Obama 2.0”, as quoted by a White House adviser — the Democratic president had already admitted to several tactical errors. While recognizing his underestimation of the rigidity and cumbersomeness of the Washington machine, he admitted that the lowering of taxes within the plan to boost economic revival was likely to have been unnecessary. In reframing the consequences of his electoral defeat on the grounds of “adjustments,” the Democratic president seeks to avoid the trappings of a hostile cohabitation already mooted by the winners of Nov. 2. Like Bill Clinton in 1994, Obama’s goal is to do everything to avoid a full-on ideological war by declaring himself ready to compromise with Republicans on employment and deficit reduction. To do everything that avoids the trap of a turbulent cohabitation that would ruin his efforts to adjust. But the hard-line stance of the Republicans gives him a slim margin in which to operate. All the more so when their explicit strategy is less about negotiating bipartisan solutions than doing everything possible to prevent Barack Obama from winning a second term.

After the trauma of Nov. 2, many analysts now feel that Barack Obama has no other choice than to “pull a Clinton” — that is, to fall back on a moderate program, if not centrist, until 2012 — with the main difference being that the economic situation is more tense, with unemployment levels nearly twice as high as in the fall of 1994 (9.6 percent today versus 5.6 percent then). Unlike the former Democratic governor of Arkansas, seasoned in the art of compromise with Republican adversaries, Barack Obama is not necessarily a champion of “triangulation.” And against the new tea party heroes, such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who likes nothing better than to quote Thomas Jefferson: “That government is best which governs least,” Obama 2.0 will struggle to declare, as did Bill Clinton in January 1996, that the era of “big government” is over. On the contrary, it’s a safe bet that he will do everything to protect the health reform that he has spearheaded during the first half of his term in office.

The path is therefore narrow for 2012. For Barack Obama, the priority will be in the end to dispel the lingering suspicion that he may have been a better candidate than a president in office — and also to prove that his tactical acumen matches his ambitious agenda.

(1) The New York Times Magazine, dated Oct. 17, 2010, “The Education of a President.” Pierre de Gasquet is New York correspondent for “Les Echos.”

* Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.