Two Scenarios for the Future of the USA

It is not the first time that an American president has seen, as Obama did yesterday, a congressional majority completely different from the one that had accompanied him to power two years before, climbing the stairs on Capitol Hill and taking seats in Congress. This time, however, the jump is particularly striking, especially in terms of numbers: The Republicans have 49 seats more than their opponents in the House, a majority big enough to make a legislative agenda a reality. There is also a good number of newcomers who belong to a generation — still partly unknown — of radical conservatives, rabidly hostile to all the programs that Obama has made or attempted to implement in the first two years of his term. Rather than a course correction, if their vision was to prevail, we’ll be looking at a sea change in the political course of this legislature.

Of course there are also impediments. Firstly in the Senate, where the majority is still marginally Democratic. And then in the right of veto, which the president can always use when necessary in the face of a law that clearly violates the direction of White House policy. This measure, however, can’t be used indiscriminately, as it opens up an explicit disparity between the administration and Congress. In any case, it is now up to the Republicans to say what they want and how they intend to set the legislature.

It must be said that as the new Congress was sworn in like always at the beginning of the year, the White House has, in these past few weeks, begun to position itself differently in view of the new balance after the unfortunate elections of Nov. 2: Obama 2.0, as some commentators have referred to it, was in fact born two months before this Congress was inaugurated. For example, to resolve the issue of reducing the tax cuts inherited from Bush, which expired in 2010, Obama went on his own initiative to meet Republicans and agree to an extension, but cleverly bartering it for the Republican endorsement of some expenditure items to stimulate the economy — a move that got him the applause of his party.

Now it is up to the new speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner, to translate into concrete measures the ideas that the majority intends to pursue. In his first speech yesterday, he stuck mainly to institutional issues that are his direct responsibility, and in particular, the need for clarity and transparency in the procedures and the acts of Congress as well as in the stages that precede them. The long applause from both Republicans and Democrats that welcomed him on the podium (and which has aroused in us a sad sense of envy) gives us hope.

John Boehner was formerly a businessman who led a successful sales company before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1990 and becoming the leader of a Republican minority in 2008. He’s a faithful interpreter of what is a dogma for many Americans: The State’s duty is to do only and all that the individual can’t do and that the best way to curb the state’s role is to reduce its budget. It’s around this crux, and around the (opposite) problem that comes with it in times of crisis like the one in which we’re still living — namely, to support and stimulate the economy with government intervention — that the game will be played on Capitol Hill over the next two years. It will therefore be a day-to-day, law-by-law battle (and House laws on spending are really crucial) between two opposing views: that of Obama — of a state that must be generous because it is necessary — and that of Boehner, and many like him, of a state that must be closely monitored because it tends to invade what doesn’t belong to it. If the glimpse of the past legislature after the November elections can give us some indication in this regard, it doesn’t seem to preclude a continuous settlement based on realism: Obama, for his part, has so far proved to be willing to meet on these grounds.

Things would obviously become more difficult if, as the extreme wing of the Republican Party calls for, the majority decides to repeal health care reform, because it is Obama’s biggest accomplishment so far, and because of its great symbolic value, politically speaking. If so, it would mean that the Republican party is going not so much to continue the work that has to be done to manage the country and to introduce corrections to the previous ones as it considers necessary, but instead, this would indicate that the Republicans are already looking to the expiry of the president’s mandate and are trying to start a long electoral campaign right now.

In international relations, the fact that the majority has changed in the House shouldn’t necessarily have a direct influence except in spending laws, but without a doubt it will have the opportunity to annoy the administration — and it has indicated its intention to do so — with such things as committees of inquiry on the WikiLeaks deal and the State Department’s reaction. But even in this case, it is doubtful that the majority is going to twist the knife in a wound that affects the principles and values of national interest.

If these early thoughts are correct, we might expect the next two years to be less exciting (but less disappointing in some respects) than past ones; we might see a Barack Obama less generous in promoting visions of global denuclearization or climate change because he will be more engaged in daily survival. And we are also aware that the task of giving America a push in the transformation of its society and in the design of new global strategies will have to wait, in order to be realistically addressed, until his possible future second term.