Barack Obama Takes First in the Line for President

Barack Obama takes first in the line for president, one and a half years before the election.

The president of the U.S., Barack Obama, officially began the electoral campaign yesterday, becoming the first candidate to pledge their intention to compete for the White House in November of 2012. The early start of the campaign and his decision to preserve the star team of political consultants from the previous elections may help the president beat the fundraising record set in 2008, and the lack of a clear leader among the Republicans may help him win the election. Moreover, one important factor is working against Barack Obama: the lack of real changes, the promises on which he came to power.

The start of Barack Obama’s electoral campaign has proven to be more than modest. Yesterday morning on his supporters’ website, barackobama.com, an announcement appeared: “This campaign is just kicking off. We’re opening up offices, unpacking boxes and starting a conversation with supporters like you to help shape our path to victory. 2012 begins now, and this is where you say you’re in.” A two-minute video also appeared, in which Barack himself does not appear; neither are there deputies, business tycoons or athletes lobbying for the leader. Instead of this, his admirers, average Americans, were praising the 44th president of the U.S. “I don’t always agree with Obama, but I respect him,” says Ed from North Carolina.

Simultaneously with the appearance of the clip yesterday morning, thousands of activists and supporters of the president received an email from him. “Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign. We’re doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you — with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers and friends. And that kind of campaign takes time to build. So even though I’m focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today,” he wrote, signing it simply “Barack.”

The fundamentals for Barack Obama’s election campaign have already been set up. The Democratic Party has announced that he will give a formal application to the U.S. Federal Election Commission to take part in the presidential races of 2012. This will allow Mr. Obama to start collecting donations. Yesterday on the site barackobama.com, there was already a button to “donate,” and after clicking, any citizen of the U.S. may donate up to $5,000 to the candidate’s treasury. According to American laws, this is the maximum amount for a private donation, and half must go to organize primary campaigns. The first big fundraising event should take place on April 14 in Chicago, where the campaign headquarters will be located.

The unusually early start of the electoral campaign (the incumbent president is the first official candidate for the post of the White House leader) will give Barack Obama an array of important advantages. “When you start raising money in April rather than October, you can raise more money,” suggests Dan Schnur from the University of South Carolina, who was previously an adviser for Republican Senator John McCain. In the course of the 2008 campaign, the senator from Illinois managed to collect a record $750 million that largely ensured his success in the race. This achievement by Barack Obama’s team may well be exceeded. “It’s definitely within reach, as he raised three-quarters of a billion last time. As the incumbent president it’s quite plausible to imagine him raising $1 billion,” says the executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute in Washington, Michael Malbin. The experts are uncertain whether Barack Obama will be able to repeat his previous record and receive 4 million private donations. “That’s something that we’re not going to see this time around, that level of excitement about the Obama candidacy that we saw last time, from people who are not traditional donors or traditional Democratic primary voters,” said Anthony Corrado from Colby College to Reuters. Moreover, this money will compensate the largest donors and corporations with interest, for whom Barack Obama is a well-known candidate, and not a dark horse, as in 2008.

An extremely serious factor in favor of the Barack Obama campaign succeeding is that the president has managed to preserve the team he had in 2008. The leader of the campaign this time is once again the White House’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Jim Messina, who had shown himself to be a brilliant organizer during the 2008 race. As noted by Chris Cillizza, the author of a blog on The Washington Post’s website, assisting Obama will be practically all of the people who forged his previous victory, with the exception of the former adviser to the president David Axelrod, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (it is possible that he will soon work at Facebook), adviser David Plouffe and the remaining star political consultants of the first campaign.

Finally, the last but not the least factor acting in favor of the current resident of the White House is the rift in his opponents’ camp: the Republicans. So far, none of them have officially announced their intention to run, but clearly there is not yet a leader of the “party of elephants.” Among the plausible candidates are the ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former Governor of Massachusetts millionaire Mormon Mitt Romney, former Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former Governor of Utah and Ambassador to China John Huntsman, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi. The former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who was advanced by the Republicans in 2008 as Senator John McCain’s running mate, has so far not said anything about her intention to take part in the race, although a new female star may appear within the party: the 54-year-old Michele Bachmann, a representative for Minnesota in Congress. Nevertheless, even the pillars of the party, such as the former adviser for George W. Bush and one of the key Republican political consultants, Karl Rove, believe that Obama should be considered to be the favorite in the race. One official from the Republican political apparatus even admitted to a correspondent from Reuters that “Obama could win if he raises only $1” because of a lack of a clear right-wing leader.

However, in the year and a half before the elections a lot can change. Nevertheless, one serious factor works against Barack Obama: his mostly unfulfilled promises, beginning with the closing of the prison at Guantanamo. Although the senator from Illinois based his campaign on promises of change and fundamental reform, the two and a half years of his leadership have been spent almost entirely on two revolutionary laws — reforms in the health insurance system and the reform of the financial system. It is true that both reforms are far from completion and suffer criticism (especially the medical reforms). The president has also not yet managed to support steady economic growth after the crisis, which worries Americans most of all.

Lastly, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate has not brought forth a revolution in foreign policy. Washington does not have solutions for the nuclear problems in Iran and North Korea yet, and has not made friends with China. In addition to the wars in Afghanistan (American troops will begin to depart the country by the end of the year) and Iraq (although official military operations have ceased, there are still around 50,000 soldiers there), Barack Obama has managed to start a new operation against Libya (though it is true that the Pentagon has already minimized its role). A single achievement could be the “reset” with Russia, but even that could stumble on the problem of anti-ballistic missile defense (see the material on page 8). In light of this, the foreign policies of Obama, who has tried to change the U.S.’ role as the world police, finds himself in a position of weak understanding from a large part of the expert community.

As a result, already in the first letter Barack Obama decided to softly apologize for unfulfilled promises: “We’ve always known that lasting change wouldn’t come quickly or easily.”