Instructive at many levels
Swap Democrat with Republican, and the US mid-term poll is eerily similar to the ’06 election, when the Republicans lost their last Senate majority, leaving George Bush a lame duck president. Interestingly, this year’s rout marks the first Republican majority in Senate since that year, when the war-president lost his appeal of earlier years, and the public had had enough of what he brought to the House. And ironically, this too has been a vote-out instead of a vote-in election. It is not that the people are supportive of Republican policy recommendations – there was hardly any policy debate during the campaigning – it is that they are fed up with Obama, whose promises of change and hope ring hollow two years into his second term.
And, come to think of it, why wouldn’t Obama’s paralysis invite voter backlash? There has been no legislation for two years. Granted, both parties have been responsible for the impasse, but such is the nature of representative politics that the incumbent must take the majority of the blame. Of late, the president has been criticised for issues ranging from continued economic slump to spread of the Ebola virus. And his Middle East policy, of course, remains a bone of contention with the Republicans. They cried out loud for action against Syria – during the chemical weapons scare. And even though Obama turned out smart by not bombing Damascus – it later turned out that the rebels most likely employed chemical agents, not the government – he could not escape the ‘not done enough’ charge. His reconciliation policy towards Iran, too, rub right-wingers the wrong way, especially the ultra-conservative bloc that forms the Republican back-bone in the periphery and, interestingly, harbours feelings of special love for Israel.
Since both Democrats and Republicans have been here before, it will be instructive to see how the latter proceed from here. They could continue to play regressive politics and keep legislation frozen, or they could come half way, at least keeping Washington functioning. But going by their posturing it seems a prolonged stalemate is in the offing. Gladly there is no downside for Pakistan. The two parties might regularly descend to downright dirty politics when the need arises, and differ with regard to internal politics, but their foreign policy is more or less the same. There’s hardly any novelty under Obama, or even a major rollback of policies he himself criticised during the days of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and ‘audacity’. Yet bouncing back, too, might not be as hard as pundits are making it sound in the immediate aftermath of the elections. Democrats, seemingly, have a habit of ‘blowing it’ every 20 years. Nixon (’74) and Clinton (’94) had similar embarrassments, which were soon forgotten.
