Barack Obama 2.0

American Presidents in their second terms do not have to worry about a third shot at office and can make hard choices. As Barack Obama’s second swearing-in ceremony approaches on January 20th, many would be measuring him with the yardstick of whether or not he puts the greater good above partisan interests in the next four years.

Yet, the fact that a President is also the de facto leader of a political party, which faces biennial legislative elections, (the next Congressional polls will be held in 2014) places limits on his freedom. The skill with which Mr Obama navigates the congressional minefields on his domestic welfare agenda and non-militaristic foreign policy is the barometer of his success.
Mr Obama is already a great President in US history for many record-breaking reasons, but one of them stands out. In his victory speech after trouncing Republican challenger Mitt Romney last November, he spoke about “what politics can be”. He described it as “determination”, “pride” and “patriotism” of mobilised citizens who volunteer and struggle for fairer access to education, employment and housing. Since 2008, Mr Obama has given America and the world many lessons in participatory politics. Now the focus shifts to how he will harness this inclusive politics to promote justice in the US, while keeping at bay conservative opponents in the US Congress who are digging in their heels for an uncompromising combat.
With an America plagued by a non-consensual domestic political structure, there will be many policy setbacks and gridlocks in Mr Obama’s second term. Brinkmanship over the fiscal cliff, right until the clock ticked into 2013, and yet more battles to come over government spending (including a new debt ceiling wrangle) are predictors of a turbulent future. The anti-tax Republican guru Grover Norquist has threatened Congressional trench warfare on federal spending approvals, wherein every single proposal that involves government expenditure will be vetoed or delayed to stymie normal functioning of the Obama administration.
Mr Obama may have induced as many as 85 Republicans in the House of Representatives to approve tax increases on the ultra-rich during the fiscal cliff struggle, but he faces a much harder obstacle on the question of the appropriate size of government, which is the real ideological concern behind tooth-and-nail opposition of Republicans to increased government spending. Clashing philosophies of governance between the White House and the partly Republican-dominated Congress are taking a heavy toll on America and reflect a deeper tussle between an old order based on a vision of individualism that actually privileges big businesses, and a new order that seeks a society less dominated by giant capitalist enterprises.
Some observers are urging Mr Obama to learn from his great idol, Abraham Lincoln, and forge cross-party working factions that may help him break the deadlock in Washington. 2012 was, in some ways, not very different from 1864, when the American Civil War was raging on the divisive issue of slavery. The character playing President Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s new eponymous Hollywood motion picture says, memorably, after the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery is passed in the US Congress, that Americans showed the world that “democracy isn’t chaos”. Mr Obama has to do no less in his second term.
After a hard-fought re-election, Mr Obama has to toil away at fulfilling pledges and living up to the hopes Americans have invested in him to rule for another four years. But systemic economic crises cannot be vanquished with a magic wand, and the rise of more power centres around the world that do not submit to Washington’s will is inexorable. What Mr Obama can achieve in his second coming is to ensure that America grows more equitable at home, and is more adept at building alliances that promote balance-of-power internationally. That is the essence of his daunting renewed mandate.
The hardest gauntlets that will trouble Mr Obama’s foreign policy brief in his second term will be implementing his desires of downsizing the Pentagon’s excessive claim on the government budget, withdrawing maximum possible ground troops from the failed war in Afghanistan, and executing the “pivot” to East Asia to restrain China.
Defenders of a universal American military footprint will insist that Mr Obama spares the defence expenditure from the scissors at any cost. Republicans integrated into the US military industrial complex do not mind pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of state spending into defence, even if such exorbitance contradicts their visceral preference for fiscal conservatism and small governments. Basically, what the militaristic hawks are gunning for is to force Mr Obama to execute deep cuts in social welfare spending (Medicare, Medicaid, education etc.), while leaving the Pentagon’s claim on the GDP untouched.
Their formula of “starve the people, if need be, but keep America’s war machine abroad intact” runs counter to the democratic will of American people suffering a protracted economic crisis.
Mr Obama is conscious of tremendous social expectations to terminate the intervention in Afghanistan faster than scheduled, but the lobbying power of the military corporations and Army generals to keep a large “residual force” and long operational capacity there will not be easy to overcome.
Can Mr Obama walk the talk on his Asian “pivot” while pushing the US military into withdrawal mode and forging a foreign policy that “leads from behind” rather than the front? During its first term, Obama administration officials insisted that slashing the US defence budget may deprive resources for power projection in some regions, but that East Asia would witness a raise, not a cut, in American military allocation. The exceptional status of East Asia in American priorities owes to the China factor as a behemoth deserving maximum attention. Mr Obama’s performance in the second term will be judged mainly on how deftly he handles Chinese assertiveness.
One key policy-impacting development working in Mr Obama’s favour during his second term is the shale gas revolution at home that has brightened prospects of an energy self-sufficient America. Reduced dependence on the volatile West Asia would render redundant the US military’s obsession with controlling that region. If the shale gas miracle delivers, Saudi Arabia would lose salience for Washington while the geopolitical value of Vietnam or Cambodia would shoot up. An Obama who thus trains his sights on stabilising East Asia should be welcomed in India, whose own maneuvering space expands if China faces stiffer strategic competition.

The author is dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs