A HISTORICALLY HIGH national debt and deficit, an economy verging on yet another collapse both at home and abroad that has be supported by government interventions, and a failing state on its southern border. Not forgetting the impossibility to instate any sensible legislation (for instance, single payer healthcare) in a political climate more polarised than a 3D dramatisation of Thatcher’s Britain. This is the battlegrounds of the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
If there is any doubt left, the Obama administration has been a complete failure – and for the Democratic parties 2016 (thus Hillary Clinton’s) election hopes, Obama’s incompetence may well be a blessing in disguise … it may even help repair Bush the second’s reputation!
Obama’s elaborate book tour, also known as the 2008 presidential election, succeeded. Book sales skyrocketed. However, on his tour of all “58 states” a by-product of having to campaign is that he had to make a couple of promises.
Either under the illusion he was going to lose or just sheer insanity he promised to close the deeply unpopular but politically useful Guantanimo Bay, a probably illegal incarceration facility in Cuba for suspected terrorists. He also pledged to leave Iraq by 2010, to instate a single payer healthcare system and a plethora of other difficult to keep promises. More than five hundred of them.
Unfortunately for him, the electorate fell for it.
Following his two inaugurations, on the 22nd of January 2009 he signed an order to close Guantanimo Bay. Four years on, the facility is still in use. This means 171 inmates held in geo-political limbo. In an obvious violation of the U.S. constitution they are tortured, humiliated and then tried in front of bogus military courts.
In addition to this, Obama’s healthcare promise was destined to fail as soon as you mixed the United States and universal healthcare. Government intervention in anything is a well known voter repellent in stubbornly free-market America; no matter how desperate the need is. Rather than commanding votes from his own party and confidence from the electorate he had to face belligerent Senators and Congressmen, bizarre accusations of wanting to make the country into a fascist state with him being portrayed as Hitler, and death panels where Hitler-Obama decided to kill off elderly, disabled or anyone he personally believed to be a drain on the Peoples Democratic Republic of the United States. Because he allowed these myths to propagate the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’ ended up a hugely watered down piece of legislation that has increased the cost of healthcare and damaged the potential for actual reform of healthcare in the U.S. for decades.
Other failures include a continuation of misguided foreign policy, a seemingly declining U.S., petrol prices rising from $1.88 per gallon at the start of Obama’s reign to over $4 per gallon, national debt rising from $10 trillion in 2009 to $16 trillion today, banks gallivanting around the country repossessing homes without proof the owners have defaulted, the list could continue.
Things will only get worse. After the next election Washington have to cut their deficit. They have to cut their armed forces. They have to get the economy moving. They have to deal with Israel and other foreign policy enigmas. There is an awful lot they have to do!
This is why this is the election to lose. Doing any of this in the U.S., with their pseudo-patriotism they’re obliged to express in a North Korea-esque fashion, is impossible. It results in a country where the military is untouchable, where religion with its flawed morals has crept into the apparently secular government and holding back women’s rights and the progression of science, where the Jewish lobby is coercing the U.S. into a pointless conflict with Iran. In short, political discourse in the country has stalled.
The Republican Parties response? A third rate candidate with a third rate running mate. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
If the Republican National Committee (the shepherds of the Republican Party) wanted to win surely they would have forced Jebb Bush to stand – or at least anyone else other than a u-turn prone, wooden, unlikable, former private-equity investor, Mormon, Mittens!
In other words, the Republican Party have been coerced by the committee into selecting an easily attackable loser who went on to ‘select’ another easily attackable running mate who brings no new voters. Normally the criteria in selecting Vice Presidential candidate is to bring in new voters – if he was serious about winning Marco Rubio would have brought in the huge Hispanic vote, Condoleezza Rice would have brought in a demographic that Romney has a huge issue with, women, and even Ron Paul would have been a better selection than Paul Ryan.
The big players are staying out of this election; they know the 2016 election is the one to win. Hillary Clinton ran off to Vladivostok during the Democratic National Convention whilst at the Republican convention Jebb Bush spent time repairing his big brothers reputation to make his 2016 chances more favourable. They’re keeping their distance … they don’t want to be damaged goods.
The US. Democracy at its finest!
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