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Illustration by Uday Deb

The front page of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign site is dominated by a panoramic picture of the first family. They’re all flashing grins full of impossibly well formed teeth, eyes crinkled in spontaneous mirth, against an elegant off-white background. Obama looks positively giddy with joy. Pretty good for a man whose country, the one he’s been elected to lead, is crumbling under him.

Above the picture rests the message: Wish the Obamas Well for 2012. I do wonder what Obama is really wishing for in the New Year. Surely another term as US President, though I can’t fathom why he would. Getting four more years of the American presidency as a New Year gift is like getting a free colonoscopy for your birthday. Except that the colonoscopy is good for you.

The American nation is in crisis. That cannot be denied. Mainly it’s purported to be a crisis of finance. With unemployment at 8.5% and a budget deficit of 15 trillion dollars (they have a debt which is more than 12 times the size of India’s GDP) it’s a good case to make. However, there is, in my mind, a deeper crisis. One that’s been in the making ever since the cold war ended and a new era of unfettered consumerism was ushered in by the Ronald Reagan government.

Greed in the 1980s somehow became a virtue, and profit-making a national philosophy. The rule of the land eventually ended up in the hands of the corporations. And it is the effect of this metamorphosis that is finally being felt today. There is no better way of saying it, the United States of America has gone a tad insane, or to put it mildly, seems to have finally lost the plot.

The culture of American exceptionalism that was once so cared for by the country’s conservatives is being given new meaning by their beloved Republican politicians. For starters,the top Republican contender for the presidency in 2012 exclaimed after divorcing his first wife, “She isn’t young enough or pretty enough to be the President’s wife.” A class act, and possibly the next leader of the free world, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Newt Gingrich. A man who takes ‘free’ speech very seriously.

If by some dint of chance, he is indeed the Republican nominee, the Republican Party would pretty much have gift wrapped Obama a second term. What seems frightening is that in the entire field of Republican presidential candidates, there is hardly anyone better. Classier? Yes. Less critical of poor children and the child-labour laws that protect them? Possibly. Better? No. Because underlying all their philosophy, political or economic, is a myopic subservience to the free market.

The Republicans have spent their time strenuously filibustering the expiry of the Bush tax cuts, which would have marginally raised the tax rates of those who make more than $250,000 annually, in September. And then in December, tried to block an extension of the pay-roll tax relief for those who make $50,000 dollars annually, and which would put $40 more in their accounts every week.

If one thinks that given this sort of pandering to the top 1% of the American population, the Republicans would be in dire straits when it came to the popular vote, they couldn’t be more wrong. Recent polls suggest that 43.5% of Americans would like to see the GOP back in power. The same percentage of the population wants to keep Obama. The rest, of course, remain undecided.

So, now for the golden question — Will Obama keep his presidency next year? Most likely. The kind of candidates that are being trotted out of the Republican stables might just be too virulently anti-middle class and energise the Democratic base. But will any of this change America’s rather pronounced downturn of fortunes? Probably not.

The US president is often referred to as the most powerful man in the world. Nothing could be more off the mark. As has been apparent in the case of Barack Obama, the best of his intentions have been stifled by the Americans Congress and the Senate, where most members have often been found following an inflexible line drawn by all-pervasive and all-powerful corporations. Also, when 14 of your top 20 campaign donors are corporations like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citibank, there is very little you can do to counter the excesses of the big banks without endangering your re-election chances.

Which is why, the Bank of America (BoA), one of the big financial institutions which instigated the financial meltdown with its negligent and barely legal practices, was bailed out by the government at the cost of 15 billion dollars of tax payer’s money. It was deemed too big too fail. If the markets were truly free then it wouldn’t be. Today BoA boasts of a 6.5 billion dollar profit. And what of the taxpayers who bailed it out? Turns out that most of them are still poor and unemployed.

All signs suggest that the time of America as the unchallenged financial leader of the world is over. Even the most optimist economists are predicting a lost decade for the US. Countries like China, Brazil and India have risen to take their place at the top of the world financial ladder. The question that Obama should ask himself when he flashes that incandescent smile of his at his next photo-op is: Does he really want to preside over the years that finally see the American claim of being the greatest nation on earth put to the sword?

Wouldn’t Newt Gingrich be a more appropriate candidate
for that?