Matt Weir / The Collegian
In Nov. 2008, Barack Obama handily defeated Sen. John McCain to become president of the United States, winning 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 173 and 53 percent of the popular vote to McCain’s 46 percent. It was the type of victory that American presidential politics hadn’t seen since George H.W. Bush was swept into office in 1988 on the strength of the popularity of his old boss Ronald Reagan.
In other words, it was as close to a mandate as we get in today’s political world.
Two short years later, Obama is on the cusp of losing his huge majorities in the Senate and the House, his approval ratings have plunged twenty points since his inauguration, and in a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush, who had a 34 percent approval rating when he left office, by the slim margin of 47 percent to 45 percent, well within the margin of error.
What can account for this huge shift among the electorate? Did Obama misread his mandate?
Since Obama has been in office he has been a liberal’s dream domestically””the U.S. government has nationalized parts of the auto industry, bailed out Wall Street, appointed two liberals to the Supreme Court and passed a new health-care reform law.
The result? Obama’s efforts to improve the economy have failed, with employment at 9.6 percent thought, the administration promised it would never rise above eight percent, the Supreme Court’s approval rating is down ten points from last year and, according to a Sept. 20 poll by Rasmussen Reports, 61 percent of likely voters favor repealing the health care law.
From the looks of it, the American electorate did not, to the chagrin of Obama and the democrats, intend to elect FDR part deux.
Who, then, did they elect?
First, a history lesson. From 1995-2007, the Republican Party had a stranglehold on the Congress, controlling both the House and the Senate every year except the Senate from 2001-2003. George W. Bush was, of course, president from 2001-2009. In the 2006 elections, however, Democrats took control of both houses while Bush’s approval ratings hovered in the mid-30 percent range.
Why? It wasn’t the economy””unemployment in Nov. 2006 stood at 4.3 percent. It wasn’t a massive switch in ideology””since 1992, the highest percent of the American population that classified itself as liberal has been 22, in 2008, while the lowest number calling themselves conservative has been 36 percent.
Why, then, did Republicans get kicked out of the Congress?
Answer: the Iraq War. That is what put Democrats in power of Congress and what drove moderates to Barack Obama in droves in 2008.
Might this have been Obama’s mandate?
The American people repudiated the neoconservative foreign policy of George Bush and Republicans twice, yet how has Obama changed that? Combat troops were removed from Iraq on the same schedule as Bush’s and 50,000 “support troops” are staying in Iraq; the war in Afghanistan has been escalated with no end or sense of victory in sight; the U.S. government has started a proxy war in Pakistan, culminating in their apology to the Pakistani government for mistakenly killing Pakistani soldiers.
This is where President Obama should have differed from Republicans.
Obama should have immediately removed all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, declaring victory in both areas while acknowledging that the U.S. is not in the business of nation building. He should have removed U.S. bases in places like South Korea and Japan, whose peoples don’t want us there anymore, and stopped subsidizing Western Europe’s defense. He should have announced that America would no longer have an imperial presence around the globe.
Alas, he didn’t. Now Obama, and the American people, will pay the price.