Obama, Moses and exaggerated expectations
-Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own-
President Barack Obama is close to the half-way mark of his presidential mandate, a good time for a brief look at health care, unemployment, war, the level of the oceans, the health of the planet, and America’s image. They all featured in a 2008 Obama speech whose rhetoric soared to stratospheric heights.
“If…we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I’m absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last best hope on earth.”
The date was June 3, 2008. Obama had just won the Democratic Party’s nomination as presidential candidate. He was also winning the adulation of the majority of the American people, who shrugged off mockery from curmudgeonly Republicans who pointed out that the last historical figure to affect ocean levels was Moses and he had divine help when he parted the Red Sea.
Obama took to the campaign trail again this month to help Democratic candidates for the mid-term elections on November 2 and he would need divine intervention to prevent his party from losing control of the House and possibly the Senate.
The vote is in part a referendum on his first two years in office and the adoration has faded, not least because it would have been difficult for anyone to actually meet the high expectations he raised in dramatic speeches.
There is a certain symmetry between next month’s mid-terms and those four years ago, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress (and consolidated it in 2008). The result stemmed from dissatisfaction with the economy, with the Republican Party and with President George W. Bush. Now there is dissatisfaction with the economy (much more troubled than in 2006) with Democrats, and with Obama.
from Commentaries:
Japan takes a kinder approach to growth
The victorious Democratic Party of Japan did not put economic growth at the heart of its electoral sales pitch. The party's manifesto mentions "growth" only once. The word "support", by contrast, appears 19 times.
Even so, there are reasons for optimism that the DPJ's softer and more nurturing policies are just what the economy needs.
The global slump provided a painful reminder of the dangers of Japan's export-oriented growth strategy. Output has fallen even faster than in other rich countries, leaving national income at roughly the same level as in the early 1990s.
After two decades of stumbling between recessions, policy makers need to convince their citizens to spend some of their vast cash savings, which are now equal to 1.5 times GDP. Making the Japanese feel more secure may be the best way of doing this.
There is plenty in the DPJ's platform that looks encouraging. If Japan's new government can enact election pledges, Japanese citizens would have fewer reasons to hoard cash.
Parents would benefit from a generous child allowance. High-school education would be made free and university scholarships more plentiful. For the elderly, there would be a minimum guaranteed pension of at least 70,000 yen (about $750) a month. The unemployed would get 100,000 yen (about $1,100) a month during job training.
There are two problems, however. The first is how to pay for this largess. The party's belief that its $180 billion social agenda can be financed by cutting wasteful spending has left some economists unconvinced. A good deal of the fat in the budget was cut out when Junichiro Koizumi was prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
Japan, a nation ten times as densely populated as the U.S., is so badly over-crowded that they are incapable of consuming products at a rate necessary to gainfully employ their labor force, thus making them utterly dependent on manufacturing for export. (It’s a fact that over-crowding reduces per capita consumption, simply due to a lack of space for using and storing products, beginning with housing.)
The DPJ is faced with an impossible situation. Japan is doomed to rising unemployment and poverty as nations like China and India begin to muscle in on their export markets.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
from The Great Debate UK:
Japan: The election that might change everything
- Arudou Debito, is a columnist for the Japan Times, activist, blogger at debito.org, and Chair of the NPO Foreign Residents and Naturalized Citizens Association. The opinions expressed are his own -
Japan's famous mantra is that things don't change much or very quickly. But I have a feeling that this approaching Lower House parliamentary election on August 30 just might prove that wrong.
But first some background. Japan has been ruled essentially by one party since the end of World War II -- the Liberal Democrats (LDP). That's longer than in any other liberal democracy, competing with other countries that have no other parties to choose from.
There are many theories as to why that happened. Some might insist that risk-averse Japanese weren't ready to tamper with the status quo, when economic growth was running so smoothly between 1950 and 1990, and everyone was feeling prosperous.
But that theory breaks down when you realize that Japan is the only developed economy which actually SHRANK on average over the past twenty years. If prosperity breeds contentment, two decades is enough time to voters make the elected feel their winter of discontent.
I believe there just hasn't been a viable opposition party until now. The previous #2 party for most of the postwar era, the Socialists, were essentially a one-issue group, holding just enough seats to block any revisions to Japan's "Peace Constitution". They succeeded. Our peacetime constitution has never been amended.
But the Socialists imploded in 1995 when their leader made a Faustian bargain to take power briefly from the LDP. Ineptitude and three decades of opposition politics soon tripped them up, and the LDP was back in power within a year.
I am at a loss to see why Mr Arudou gets so excited about the DPJ’s manifesto when he first says it makes the policies clear, then says it is “a bit vague”, and “may turn out to be merely policial promises”.
In addition, it does seem incongruous to complain about inherited members while failing to note that the leader of the DPJ Yukio Hatoyama is himself a fourth generational Dietmember and the grandson of a Prime Minister.
The Obama challenge
America wakes up today to a new era in its political history. And as Barack Obama prepares to take office, he will have to wrestle with these facts of life: the economy is either in recession or teetering on the brink of one, and the U.S. is embroiled in two wars.
Across the Web, a plethora of voices are dissecting the campaign . In a BusinessWeek piece, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch makes his position clear, saying John McCain’s economic platform made better sense for business, and that business leaders could take away three lessons from the election: Have a clear, consistent vision; make few mistakes; and have friends in high places.
Over at the New York Times, an editorial concludes that Obama’s triumph was decisive because “he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens.” It also points out some of the challenges facing the president-elect: “Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.”
Across the Atlantic, interest in the election has also been high. British newspaper The Independent wonders whether Obama will be “a modern-day Franklin D Roosevelt, who pulled the US back up over the economic precipice, or will he be a disastrous copy of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover?”
And Edward Luce, writing for the Financial Times, says: “Faced with a mountain of domestic and global problems that would have taxed the leadership skills of America’s greatest presidents, Mr Obama will have to act swiftly to justify the faith his country’s voters have placed in him.”
In Asia, Kent Ewing says in the Asia Times Online that “it is once again cool to be an American living abroad,” giving voice to the anger many foreigners harbor against George W. Bush.
What’s your view? Beyond the history-making, President-elect Obama must still govern. Given the challenges of today, how will he do? Will he live up to expectations?
Instant reactions are just that…it will be interesting to see if Obama can organize his government team as well as he organized his election team. Maybe he will be a leader..but maybe he is just a good communicator. Only time will tell, but his challenges are almost as great as those of Roosevelt and it took WWII to solve our economic and military problems…
The Democrats have all of the pieces, but they don’t have real leaders in the House or Senate, but neither did the Republicans.
Lets all pray…together, since it will take more power than we have…
Bill Rothschild, author of Risktaker, Caretaker, Surgeon and Undertaker the four faces of strategic leadership.
Real vs unreal Americans
By Bernd Debusmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – What is a real American? As opposed to an unreal American, a fake American, an un-American American or an anti-American American.
The answer is in the eye of the beholder and his or her political orientation. The question, and variations of it, has been asked in several periods of U.S. history and has bubbled up again, one of a number of odd sideshows, in the closing stages of the campaign for the presidential election on Nov. 4.
Robin Hayes, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, provided details on Americans who do not qualify as real. “Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God.” Both Palin and Hayes later “clarified” their remarks to say they had not actually meant to suggest the existence of pro- and anti-American parts of the country. Nevertheless, their words prompted a vivid debate in cyberspace and on talk radio.
What is a real American? I think that question was best answered back in 1835 by Alexis de Tocqueville in his “Democracy in America.” It’s still accurate. Try reading that instead of listening to self-serving politicians.
In U.S. elections, fear of Muslims
(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In the summer of 2006, a Gallup poll of more than 1,000 Americans found that one out of four favoured forcing Muslims in the United States, including U.S. citizens, to carry special identification. About a third said Muslims living in the U.S. sympathized with al Qaeda.
Almost a quarter said they wouldn’t want a Muslim as a neighbour. Republicans, the poll said, saw Muslims in a more negative light than Democrats and independents, and were more opposed to having Muslim neighbours. Fewer than half those polled thought U.S. Muslims were loyal to the United States.
A few months after the poll, callers to a Washington area radio talk show suggested branding Muslims with crescent-shaped tattoos and special stamps in their identity papers, the better to spot potential terrorists.
Polls are snapshots of attitudes, and attitudes can change. But incidents during the U.S. presidential election campaign, now in its final sprint towards November 4, show that fear and suspicion of Muslims persist undiminished and are being used as a political weapon.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell became the most prominent member of the U.S. establishment to highlight the problem when he broke with John McCain, the Republican candidate and a personal friend of decades, to endorse Barack Obama, target of a prolonged campaign by activists who portray him as a Muslim.
One of his reasons: “I’m troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the (Republican) party say,” he told a television interviewer this week. “And it is permitted to be said such things as ‘well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.
Am I the only one who can mentally replace the word ‘Muslims’ in the first three paragraphs with the word ‘Jews’ and see that we’ve got 1930′s Germany happening here in ‘Good ol America’??? Powell is probably the only person associated with the Bush Administration who is worthy of respect — Listen up!
from FaithWorld:
Muslims and the U.S. election — two sobering reminders
Two Reuters colleagues in the United States have written sobering accounts of the place of Muslims and Islam in the U.S. presidential election campaign.
"These are uneasy times for America's Muslims, caught in a backwash from a presidential election campaign where the false notion that Barack Obama is Muslim has been seized on by some who link Islam with terrorism," writes Chicago religion writer Mike Conlon in "Sour note for American Muslims in election campaign."
"Incidents during the U.S. presidential election campaign, now in its final sprint towards November 4, show that fear and suspicion of Muslims persist undiminished and are being used as a political weapon," writes Washington columnist Bernd Debusmann in "In U.S. elections, fear of Muslims."
Click on the hyperlinked titles for the rest of the story.
Both of them cite former Secretary of State Colin Powell asking the real question that the other politicians, including Barack Obama, have been avoiding: "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion 'He (Obama) is a Muslim and might be associated with terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."
Election campaigns can bring out some ugly emotions. Do you think this will calm down after Nov. 4? Or, especially if Obama wins, will the rumour campaign against Muslims continue?
To me, if you vote based on religion or race you are a bigot and un-american. You obviously also do not value the Constitution and the principles upon which this nation was created.
@efes: Yes, some Americans are like that. And so are you and your countrymen. Perhaps your country hasn’t developed yet to the point where you can indulge yourselves in such banal things, but you will. I love when non-Americans criticize Americans, as if they were any better. You are not. Get over yourselves. And thank god that the USA has the power it has, and not some other government, like yours…