Obama’s Priorities

With less than two years remaining until the 2012 U.S. elections, one can tell that the president of the United States will not invest much time in the Middle East.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and potential presidential candidate, has aptly labeled the next two years as “Clinton’s third term”. Specifically, Bill Clinton’s. Behind that label lies a claim that will be proven tomorrow evening in Obama’s annual State of the Union address. The claim is that Obama will shift towards the center, that he will attempt to reclaim the independent voters he lost during the midterm elections, calm the business sector and find ways to function in a new reality with a contrarian, Republican-controlled House. He will find a way to be a little less like Obama and a little more like Clinton. His new appointees hint at this, the foreign policy he outlines reveals it and the growing discontent within the far left proves it.

Regardless, for the next two years as the next elections come closer, there will be an increasing congruence between Obama’s agenda and that of the majority of voters. There is a great reserve of goodwill and trust that the president can benefit from. Polls are showing slight improvements in his popularity. Infighting over the Republican presidential nomination is bound to hurt their candidate. Overall, Obama’s prospects in the fight for re-election are reasonable, and perhaps better than that. He will not rock the boat too much, and he will devote most of his attention to preventing another economic downturn. Another economic crisis, more than any other event, would be a death knell to his second presidential bid.

Compromise Is Good

Is this Clinton’s third term? In 1995, after a similar blow in the midterm elections, Clinton moved right, toward the political center. His polling was similar to Obama’s, but his political standing was slightly better because of who opposed him from the Republican side: Newt Gingrich. Voters had the impression that Clinton was seeking political compromise and that the Republicans were at fault for the hopeless fighting in Washington. Likewise, according to a poll by the Wall Street Journal, voters believe that Obama is more apt to compromise than his Republican opposition. And compromise is good. However, opposing Gingrich, whom the public views as divisive, is Speaker of the House John Boehner, whom the public identifies as softer, more likable. In other words, a more formidable opponent.

Tomorrow evening, Obama and Boehner will meet for the opening moves of a political chess game that will go on for the next two months. Obama’s speech will naturally concentrate on his initiatives to jumpstart the economy. Almost 80 percent of the American voters want the White House to focus on internal affairs. It is therefore difficult to imagine a situation in which Obama continues to invest very much energy in the peace process during his next two years in office.

Good news? For those who want to delay improvement in the Palestinian arena, it is apparently good. On the other hand, there is news that is less than good: If Obama has little interest in international affairs, it is not only the Palestinian issue that will be neglected; so too will other issues of more importance to the Israeli government, like the Iranian fiasco.

According to a Pew poll from last week, Americans feel that U.S. diplomacy has not brought gains or change in regards to the situation in Iran. And on the other side, the number of voters who are primarily concerned with the problems of international diplomacy is low: only six percent. In other words, the fact that Iran is continuing to act as it pleases is apparent to the Americans; they are just not particularly concerned.