US Election: Hillary Clinton’s Victory Would Mean a Return to the Status Quo

Should the former secretary of state lead the country after “socialist” Obama, she will do so through the usual ways of power and by combining a grain of centrist progressivism with the needs of those who truly count.

No matter who wins on Nov. 8 (probably Hillary Clinton), the U.S. will experience a return to the status quo after its first black president, who was never fully accepted by the establishment. He was perceived as an alien element, a diversion route that would end once the powers that be corrected the course and drove politics down familiar roads once again.

Barack Obama only served a term as a senator before he reached the White House. He was (almost) extraneous to lobby pressures, though he realized at his own expense how influential they are and how much weight they carry. He went as far as a hostile Congress allowed him to go, with said hostility not always being limited to the Republicans.

He passed Obamacare (the health care reform that extended the right to medical treatment), he employed interventionist policies in economic matters to an extent that was unheard of in the recent past and achieved good results since the GDP increased and the unemployment rate decreased. He was cautious in matters of foreign policy, following the slogan “soft power.” This is the reason why he came across as weak before Vladimir Putin in Syria as well as Ukraine. He still had to (reluctantly) send bombers to Libya, dispatch them back to Iraq after a hasty retreat and keep them in Afghanistan.

After the crisis in 2008, he wanted to set stricter rules against finance gone mad. He had to settle for the Dodd-Frank Act that places some boundaries for the market and which Republicans cannot wait to abolish. He could not defeat the firearms lobbies and limit their sale and proliferation. Closing Guantanamo remained a promise. In a paradox, social tensions, especially those concerning race, have even become exacerbated.

From a left-wing point of view, “socialist” Obama, as conservatives contemptuously define him, earned a full passing grade, but not without a source of regret: He did not create a successor; therefore it is almost certain that the Obama experience will remain a one-off. Despite the obligatory endorsement by the outgoing president, Hillary Clinton – because of her age, her curriculum, her habits and the people she associates herself with – represents a return to the familiar ways of power. She has good connections among the Wall Street bankers and is receptive to their wishes. She is experienced in dealing with the upper class of the East Coast and in navigating the diplomatic world and the Pentagon. In short, she is a woman of the world. She is capable of combining a grain of centrist progressivism with the needs of those who truly count.

It is therefore very likely that “soft power” will become rather tougher, more muscular; all in the name of restoring America’s faded centrality in the world’s important matters. A journey into the known after Obama made people dream about the unknown, though not always successfully.