Obama faces toughest of fights

The United States will elect a new president next year. After the excitement of 2008, this will be a more anxious campaign for the US, but it's in the Middle East that Obama's re-election or defeat will be felt most keenly, writes LARA MARLOWE,Washington Correspondent

BARACK OBAMA laid out the theme of his re-election campaign in a speech in Kansas on December 6th. For three years since the financial crisis started, Obama said, “there’s been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity, restore balance, restore fairness.” That dispute had given birth to the Tea Party on the right and the Occupy movement on the left.

“This is the defining issue of our time,” Obama said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.”

He accused Republicans of wanting “to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

This confrontation between what one Democratic activist called “Darwinian economics” and fairness is the thread that Obama will stitch into all his speeches over the next 11 months, including his State of the Union address in January.

In Kansas, Obama compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt 100 years ago. “Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a licence to take whatever you can from whomever you can,” he said to applause. “For this, Roosevelt was called a radical. He was called a socialist – even a communist.” The audience laughed, for Republicans often denounce Obama as a “socialist”.

Obama says the economy can be saved through education, investment and a fairer tax system. The 10-year budget plan devised by the Republican representative Paul Ryan, which Republican candidates endorse, would cap government spending at 20 per cent of GDP. (It is currently 24.3 per cent.) Nearly two-thirds of the cuts would come from programmes for the poor, including $127 billion in food stamps. The Republicans would also make tax cuts enacted by George W Bush permanent, eliminate death duties and raise the retirement age.

Obama says the Republican theory that slashing regulations and taxes creates wealth that eventually trickles down “doesn’t work. It has never worked . . . We simply cannot return to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics.”

Although he did not openly embrace the Occupy movement, Obama has adopted the figures it uses as markers. “In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 per cent has gone up by more than 250 per cent, to $1.2 million per year,” he noted. “For the top 0.01 per cent, the average income is now $27 million per year . . . Over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 per cent.”

Obama finds it difficult to counter the message relayed by Fox News that profligate spending by Democrats, and regulations adopted by his administration, are swelling government debt and strangling the economy.

The Obama administration has passed fewer new regulations than the Bush administration before it. But the anti-government, anti-tax rhetoric of Republican candidates has been assimilated by Republican voters. In a poll by the Des Moines Register this month, 43 per cent of prospective caucus-goers said reducing government regulations would do most to create jobs; 29 per cent cited lower taxes on business. Fifty-three per cent of Iowa Republicans said everyone should pay the same rate of income tax, regardless of income.

Obama’s efforts to levy higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires – who often pay less than middle-class Americans – will doubtless continue to provoke accusations of class warfare. In the disastrous debt-ceiling crisis last summer, which resulted in the US credit rating being downgraded, Obama argued that tax increases and cuts in government spending are both necessary to tackle the nation’s $15 trillion debt. Republicans accept spending cuts only. And neither side has a solution to the profound causes of unemployment, which stands at 8.6 per cent: outsourcing to cheap labour abroad and the replacement of humans by technology.

IT IS DIFFICULT FOR Republican candidates to fault Obama on foreign policy, because he gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden and chose the strategy that led to the demise of Muammar Gadafy. Obama is keeping his promise to end the war in Iraq, a move favoured by three out of four Americans and opposed by his Republican challengers.

If the large numbers of diplomats, aid workers and intelligence personnel remaining in Iraq come to grief, Obama’s rivals will blame him. They have criticised Obama for setting a timetable for the departure from Afghanistan, including the withdrawal of 33,000 soldiers next summer.

Republicans claim Obama has allowed Iran to continue its nuclear-weapons programme, although he has obtained more severe sanctions against the Islamic Republic than any previous president, and is believed to have approved covert action, including the Stuxnet computer virus.

It is in the Middle East that Obama’s re-election or defeat will be felt most keenly. Obama says he has not excluded military action against Iran, but Republican candidates are more bellicose. Newt Gingrich says he would help Israel attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

Obama obliged Israel by defeating a Palestinian bid for recognition at the United Nations in September. Republican candidates nonetheless accuse him of “throwing Israel under the bus”– Mitt Romney’s words – and wholeheartedly embrace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some Obama supporters harbour a faint hope that, once liberated from the need for Jewish support to secure re-election, Obama could at last push for a just settlement in the Middle East.

All Republican candidates have taken a stand against abortion and same-sex marriage. “The price of admission in the Republican Party today is you’ve got to be absolutely right on all the social issues, or you might as well not even try to become president,” says Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University. But social conservatives hold it against Romney that he supported “safe and legal” abortion in 1994, and signed marriage licences for homosexual couples as governor of Massachusetts.

In one of his campaign advertisements, Texas governor Rick Perry calls the president’s repeal of a law that banned gays from serving openly in the military part of “Obama’s war on religion”. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this month said that “gay rights and human rights . . . are one and the same thing”. But Obama stops short of supporting same-sex marriage, which is now approved by 53 per cent in opinion polls.

Obama appears eager to avoid stoking the “culture wars” that swirl around reproductive and sexual questions. His administration this month vetoed a move by the US Food and Drug Administration to legalise emergency contraceptives for girls aged under 17. And Catholic officials believe Obama is about to grant exceptions to his own healthcare Bill to church-provided medical insurers on contraception.

Prof Lichtman calls immigration “the kiss of death, third-rail electrocution if you’re not right on the social issues” for Republican candidates. Perry hurt his own chances by providing university education at state residents’ rates to illegal immigrants in Texas. When Gingrich suggested more “humane” policies in dealing with immigrants, Romney accused him of advocating amnesty, which is anathema to most Republicans.

The immigration reform that Obama promised in his last campaign has not materialised. It’s a delicate balancing act for all candidates, who want to win the Hispanic vote without alienating anti-immigrant voters.

The 2012 election campaign is already a mud-slinging match. Romney and Gingrich traded insults in earnest this month, with Romney telling Gingrich to return the more than $1.6 million he received from the government-backed mortgage company Freddie Mac, and Gingrich saying he would do so “if Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees”.

THIS IS THE FIRST presidential election since the US supreme court voted in its Citizens United ruling in January 2010 to allow unlimited spending by so-called super Pacs (political action committees), without disclosure. Obama spent $750 million on his 2008 campaign, and the cost of running a campaign in 2012 could approach $1 billion. Voters will not know which corporations provide funding.

Republican governors and legislatures in Texas, Florida and other states have passed laws making it more difficult to vote by limiting the time frame for registration or by demanding photo identification, and in some cases proof of citizenship, at the polls. These new rules affect blacks, Hispanics and poor people – traditionally Democratic voters – disproportionately.

Once the Republicans choose their candidate – probably by early February, but by June at the latest – most of the campaigning will be concentrated in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, the dozen swing states Obama won in 2008, and which will make or break his re-election.

Gone is the excitement of 2008, when voters spoke of Obama as “the black Jesus”.

“The mood is a bit more grim, more anxious,” says Sue Dvorsky, chair of the Democratic party in Iowa. “People are more focused. The path is narrower and rockier, but there’s an understanding that this is an imperative, that Obama has to be re-elected, because the other side is so extreme.”

Vying for the White House: The leading candidates

Barack Obama has the advantage of being the incumbent. All but two – Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush – of the last eight elected presidents won a second term. Obama exudes charm and warmth on the campaign trail and can boast of having killed Osama bin Laden, ending the war in Iraq, passing the first healthcare Bill and saving the auto industry.

But, ultimately, the economy is the only thing that will matter, and Obama has been unable to “get the car out of the ditch” – his metaphor for launching a recovery. Obama’s approval rating hovers in the low- to mid-40 per cent range.

The Obama for America campaign, headquartered in Chicago, has a headstart over Republican rivals, with offices in all 50 states. Obama had $61,403,711 – more than all Republican candidates combined – in his war chest by September 30th, the close of the most recent financing filing period.

Newt Gingrich’s stint as speaker of the house in the 1990s gave him a reputation as a Republican revolutionary eager to do battle with Democrats – something conservatives now hunger after. But Gingrich is also remembered for repeatedly shutting down the government and for attempting to impeach Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern while Gingrich himself also had an affair with an intern.

Since leaving Congress in 1999, Gingrich has amassed tens of millions of dollars by marketing his knowledge and influence as a Washington insider.

In mid-December, Gingrich led the Republican field in the Real Clear Politics poll average, with 30.5 per cent, compared with 22.5 per cent for Mitt Romney and 9.8 per cent for Ron Paul. Momentum in the Republican camp is with Gingrich, but he is handicapped by a near-total lack of preparedness. Gingrich did not even open an office in Iowa, the first state to vote, until this month. He had raised only $2.8 million by the end of September.

Mitt Romney has the benefit of experience and the vestiges of an organisation from his failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2008. With personal wealth amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, he is by far the wealthiest candidate. He has the best organisation and had raised $32.6 million by September 30th.

Romney appeals to the business community but alienates large segments of the Republican electorate. He has been attacked for having fired thousands of workers during his career at Bain Capital and for having changed positions on virtually every issue. As governor of Massachusetts, he passed a healthcare Bill that was used as a model by the Obama administration.

Evangelical Christians, a powerful contingent in early voting states, distrust him because he is a Mormon.

Long road ahead: How 2012 will unfold in the presidential race

January 3rdRepublicans vote in the Iowa caucuses, the first shot in the Republican nomination process. Primaries follow in New Hampshire (January 10th), South Carolina (January 21st) and Florida (January 31st). Only three candidates – Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul – are likely to remain beyond South Carolina.

Late JanuaryIn what could be his last State of the Union address – its precise date will be determined by Congress – Obama will contrast his own vision of a more just United States with that of Republicans, whom he'll portray as defenders of the rich.

Early FebruaryThe identity of Obama's challenger could become clear by now, but if the race between Gingrich and Romney is very close, the suspense could last until June, as it did with the the Obama-Clinton contest in 2008.

March 6thEleven states scheduled to hold votes today, Super Tuesday. Caucuses and primaries will continue until late June.

JuneThe US supreme court will rule on the constitutionality of Obama's 2010 healthcare law. A defeat could hurt Obama's chances.

August 27th-30thRepublican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

End of AugustThe US will have withdrawn 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the summer.

September 3rd, Labor DayThe campaign enters its final, most intense phase.

September 3rd-6thDemocratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

OctoberAt least four televised debates, three involving the presidential candidates, one involving the vice-presidential candidates. If he is Republican nominee, Newt Gingrich wants seven three-hour debates, like the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.

November 6thPresidential election, followed by the winner's inauguration on January 20th, 2013.