Captain Spock’s Sober Prose

President Barack Obama cuts a good figure these days when compared with his potential Republican challengers. In his duel with them, Obama currently has the upper hand, if for no other reason than the economic upturn.

President Obama has changed the stage scenery to reflect a new national optimism more suitable to his agenda. Normally, he’s seen sitting in the midst of heavy furniture in the Oval Office, where he delivers his weekly video address. This time he’s in the gray, high-tech setting of a machine factory. He comes off a bit like Mr. Spock, that cool Star-Trek officer with the prominent ears, just as many cartoonists caricature Obama.

The factory in Petersburg, Va., produces parts for aircraft engines and has just hired more than 100 new employees because of an increase in business. Obama talks of solar and wind energy, of bio-diesel and of gasoline conservation. He talks of automobiles with better fuel efficiency, a goal he wants to achieve as a contrast to his conservative opponents who have nothing to offer other than increased drilling for more oil instead of pursuing high-tech solutions. He sounds like the director of a scientific council, peppering his sober data with the populist terminology of a barroom discussion. Professor Obama, the enlightened one.

There’s no doubt things are going his way right now. While Mitt Romney, his presumed opponent in November, drifts ever further to the right in order to rein in his arch-conservative opponent, Rick Santorum, Obama continues to score with the moderates and those yet undecided. His popularity numbers aren’t the greatest but have definitely improved recently. The most important reason for that: America’s economy is on the rebound.

Admittedly, the unemployment rate is at 8.3 percent, far above the long term average, but that’s mainly because those who had given up looking for work are now trying to re-enter the labor force. Since the recession reached its peak three years ago, 4 million new jobs have been created, 227,000 in February alone. If this positive trend continues, Obama has the better argument and businessman Romney will have a tougher time playing his trump card — his business acumen and talent for returning moribund companies back to profitability.

And Obama also took something else to heart: Americans aren’t in the mood for bold reforms like FDR’s New Deal. That’s why, recently, he says things that might have been taken from the old-school Republican playbook such as his quoting Abraham Lincoln in his State of the Union speech saying, “Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” In Detroit, on the other hand, he has room to needle Romney with the automobile industry success due to government assistance. Romney wanted to allow General Motors and Chrysler to go bankrupt. Obama saved the corporations using taxpayer money and both are posting profits today to the extent that even skeptics are being forced to reconsider their interpretation of the term “bailout.” Expect to hear more about Detroit as election day approaches.

So is the race over already? George Will, considered somewhat the grand seigneur of American conservatives, has written that the Republicans should write off any hope of capturing the White House in 2012 and concentrate instead on the congressional elections. “Romney and Rick Santorum … are conservatives, although of strikingly different stripes. Neither, however, seems likely to be elected,” wrote Will in his Washington Post column. Democratic strategist Paul Begala sees it differently and predicts the Republicans will reunite as soon as they complete the primary election process and opposition to Obama will be cemented by the absolute hatred of many in their ranks.

The great unknown factor is the Near and Middle East. If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, the United States will be forced into the war. The resulting terrorist attacks against U.S. targets will replace the current feeling of optimism in the U.S. with the same sort of bunker mentality that followed the 9/11 attacks. In addition, war in the Middle East will drive oil prices to record-high levels, thus endangering the economic recovery. Also unknown is whether the situation in Syria will sooner or later force America to intervene. In Afghanistan, the latest civilian bloodbath perpetrated by a G.I. who ran amok already threatens the orderly withdrawal of allied forces from the country. Still, the White House is focusing on the economy in the coming election. But nobody can predict whether that focus will still be priority no. 1 come November.