Obama, Gadhafi and the Election

Moammar Gadhafi’s death, announced this Thursday, Oct. 20, is good news for the Libyans, but it’s also good news for Barack Obama. After managing to kill Osama bin Laden — which George W. Bush was not able to do despite his “war on terror,” preferring instead to get bogged down in two futile wars — the 44th president can now assert to the American people that he has clearly contributed to the death of one of the principal sponsors of terrorism in the world. Gadhafi’s death is good news now, at the very moment that the presidential election campaign — a risky one for the President of the U.S. — is under way.

Currently, only 42 percent of Americans approve of Barack Obama’s performance. He has been saddled with an economy that is struggling to restart, partly thanks to Republican efforts to block any and all actions to rescue the economy. See, for example, Congress’ vote last week to reject the president’s jobs plan.

According to the classic formula, Americans vote with their wallets. But the death of the Libyan, which didn’t require the United States to get dragged into another conflict, could provide a little boost for Barack Obama’s sagging popularity. Last May, just after bin Laden’s death, his popularity increased to 56 percent according to a joint Pew Center-Washington Post poll — a figure that the 44th president would love to regain.

But today, according to an ABC News poll, 51 percent of Americans say that the only thing that matters is the health of the economy. “The election is much more about Americans losing their jobs than about Gadhafi losing his head,” explains Glen Bolger, a pollster working for Mitt Romney. Foreign policy is truly foreign for the majority of Americans.

After the first Gulf War, won in 100 hours by the elder George Bush, analysts claimed that Bush would be unbeatable in the 1992 elections a year later. But the economy took a nosedive, and Bill Clinton arrived at the White House.

Nonetheless, the death of the Libyan colonel is going to work in the president’s favor. It will reinforce his image as “commander in chief” — not an insignificant factor, especially after a year during which he has been accused of letting himself be trampled by his Republican and tea party opponents. In an election that could be determined by very few issues, any good news — even 6,000 kilometers away — is good to grab onto.