Obama Failed Leadership Test

The House of Representatives decided to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. “The entire discussion was just a game related to next year’s elections,” Professor Zbigniew Lewicki told TOK FM Radio. The specialist in American studies believes that Obama failed the leadership test.

The plan approved last night appeared to result from a compromise between Barack Obama and the Republicans. “The situation did not result from any financial crisis as such. Rather, it was because of a specific legislative requirement for the debt ceiling to be raised long after the approval of the budget where such a ceiling had been forecast.”

If not for the agreement, the U.S. government could have faced insolvency. The plan provides for increasing the debt ceiling by approximately 2.4 trillion dollars and reducing the deficit by a similar amount through government spending cuts in the next 10 years. At the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 spending is supposed to be reduced by less than a trillion dollars. Some of the Republicans gathered around the tea party and half of the Democrats were against the suggested solutions.

According to Professor Lewicki, it was just a strategic game related to the 2012 election campaign. “Both parties always compete with each other, but they don’t fight. These are mature political players who know that they can have a majority today, but a minority tomorrow. If they treat the opponent badly, they are going to be treated the same way tomorrow. The Democratic and Republican parties cooperate on many matters and there is no acrimony between their representatives. American parties are completely different from ours, there is no membership and no discipline there,” says Lewicki.

He explained that American citizens do not expect their president to rule. According to Americans, his role is to inspire solutions, set a course and keep America’s spirit. “This is what Kennedy and Reagan did. It is about making Americans proud to be Americans. It is a symbolic leadership.”

Zbigniew Lewicki claims that Barack Obama failed this test. “When he was elected, many Americans could see him as this new leader who would revive the U.S. The changes he declared were supposed to be for the better and nothing like that has happened in America. The President remained too passive. He was expected to make an incredible speech and set the course. He made two average and similar speeches and disappeared in between. He renounced his duty, but he knew the crisis was coming. It doesn’t look good for him in terms of the coming election campaign.”