Автор работы: Пользователь скрыл имя, 21 Ноября 2012 в 02:58, доклад
The Democrats was won in the historic presidential election in America in 2012. And for a second term leader of the country was re-elected the current President Barack Obama. Based on the opinion of the majority in each of the 50 United States 303 electoral votes were given to Barack Obama and 206 Mitt Romney. Barack Obama won and the number of direct participants voting for it gave voice 60652000 238 people, while the vote for Mitt Romney 57810000 407 voters. The election campaign in 2012 was the most expensive in the history of the country, the headquarters of both candidates had spent $ 6 billion. (1)
In this essay I would like to look through the main reason of the Obama`s win and his politics; will try to forecast his future steps in both - domestic and foreign policy.
In recent election his 2008 winning coalition (blacks and latinos, women, college educated, and young voters) held up and came out and voted for him again. His campaign team ran a brilliant campaign. They saturated TV with negative ads hitting Mitt Romney all summer as an elitist, rich, untrustworthy, unprincipled, candidate that could not relate to the American people. They hit him hard for his former business career where he took over companies and laid off thousands of workers. They hit him for changing his mind on everything from healthcare, to abortion, to the wars, to climate change. They made him seem untrustworthy and someone that would say anything to be elected.
Sogang University
Graduate School of International Studies
GISA 220: American Politics and American Foreign Policy
Comment Essay
Why do you think Obama won?
How do you foresee his policies (both domestic and foreign) during the second term?
Instructor: Professor Kim Jaechung
Student: I31031 IR
Ni Evgueniia
Fall 2012
The Democrats was won in the historic presidential election in America in 2012. And for a second term leader of the country was re-elected the current President Barack Obama. Based on the opinion of the majority in each of the 50 United States 303 electoral votes were given to Barack Obama and 206 Mitt Romney. Barack Obama won and the number of direct participants voting for it gave voice 60652000 238 people, while the vote for Mitt Romney 57810000 407 voters. The election campaign in 2012 was the most expensive in the history of the country, the headquarters of both candidates had spent $ 6 billion. (1)
In this essay I would like to look through the main reason of the Obama`s win and his politics; will try to forecast his future steps in both - domestic and foreign policy.
In recent election his 2008 winning coalition (blacks and latinos, women, college educated, and young voters) held up and came out and voted for him again. His campaign team ran a brilliant campaign. They saturated TV with negative ads hitting Mitt Romney all summer as an elitist, rich, untrustworthy, unprincipled, candidate that could not relate to the American people. They hit him hard for his former business career where he took over companies and laid off thousands of workers. They hit him for changing his mind on everything from healthcare, to abortion, to the wars, to climate change. They made him seem untrustworthy and someone that would say anything to be elected.
The President made his entire campaign about fighting for the middle class and wanting to make the system as fair as possible. Everyone should get a fair chance he said. He also railed against the policies of the republicans as the same ones that got US into the economic mess today. He said Romney did not have any different plans other than more tax cuts and spending more money on the military.
Romney claimed to know how to reduce the deficit while doing both of those things and the facts on that never backed him up. Mitt Romney ran a terrible campaign. He made lots of mistakes. He said 47% of the American people would not vote for him, that they will take no responsibility for their lives and that they want the government to give them everything.(2)
Romney also took very hard right positions in the republican primary that were hard to escape in the general election. His comment about Latinos "self deporting" significantly hurt him with that demographic. His inconsistency was one of the weaknesses. First he presented himself as a moderate, and then suddenly became sharp conservative and vice versa. So this alerted some voters, "Who is actually Mitt Romney?" He has no consistent and clear stance on many issues. So, he unexpectedly endorsed Obama in the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan by 2014. So far, Republicans believe the decision of the current White House administration cowardly flight. Now Romney agrees with Obama. Moreover, it is no longer in favor of the need for a military strike on Iran. Romney believes that the U.S. cannot, and increased economic sanctions against the country. So people didn`t trust him. Moreover despite numerous advertising campaigns, targeted treatment, which demonstrated that women have warmed to the Romney, he still has not caught up with the number of Obama supporters. (3) In this sense Obama acts more stable. He doesn`t have swings of mood and actions and stays faithful to his views and plans.
Just when Obama needed a big moment, hurricane Sandy struck. He got to act presidential and was seen trying to help in any way that he could, oftentimes with a republican governor by his side. This showed that he still believed in bipartisanship. It gave Obama a chance to become a national leader in the face of disaster. And voters were satisfied with the president.
The Republican party is mostly old, white and male, and Romney not reach out to the diverse population of the US. Also in 2012 Republicans made many bad statements or passed legislation that hurt or offended Hispanics and women. And these two groups punished the republicans by huge margins and voted for Obama.
The country believes that the bad economy was not Obama's fault and that it is improving. Most Americans blamed Bush for the bad economy and thought Obama deserved more time. Report on the state of the labor market in September 2012 for the first time in four years, dropped to 8 percent, which also affected on elections. (4) Plus most voters think taxes on the richest Americans should be raised, a position Obama has taken.
Obama had a sophisticated ground operation in all of the swing states that identified voters, kept in contact with them and made sure that they went to the polls to vote.
In the second term Obama will continue to work on growing the economy, driving down unemployment, reforming the tax code and policy and debt reduction. He has proposed a budget deal that includes both spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce public deficit by $3.8 trillion over a decade. (5) To achieve this, he was clear during his campaign that weight should be put to high-earned US citizens in order to avoid cuts from Medicare and the Social Security establishment, and keep securing his first-term achievements. He is also planning to expand his health insurance program.
Working on comprehensive immigration reform president Obama has picked a strong advocate of immigration reform to head his Domestic Policy Council. He plans to strengthen controlled border and an improve immigration system which should be designed to meet national economic needs to robust economy.
Developing clean energy solutions is also one of his basic goals. Obama is planning to creating new jobs in the clean energy economy (new, green jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced), to invest in the in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy. (6)
During the debates Obama also was seen as being stronger on foreign policy. Regarding his foreign policy agenda, Obama’s strategic doctrine is still putting emphasis on the maintainance of US troops in geopolitically sensitive areas (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa), proving that power politics still designate the agenda. (5) The most important steps of his foreign policy goals are: working through the complications to get US troops out of Afghanistan by 2014, forcing Al Bashar out of Syria. Also his foreign policy could become an especially strong point of focus almost immediately if Israel ups the ante with Iran on the latter’s nuclear program. (7)
Concerning Russia – US relationship, I think the key question now is whether a “reset” in the Russian-American relations is still possible and whether it would take rebranding. Unlike Mitt Romney who has never been considered as a potential partner in Moscow, Barack Obama is still a partner for the Kremlin, although a problem one. Washington is looking upon Moscow the same way. Hence, the reset in the relations between the two countries would depend on whether each of them could be able to learn from earlier mistakes. A key task for Moscow is to stop looking upon the United States as country seeking to influence the domestic political situation in Russia on the sly to frustrate its basic interests in the Eurasian space, first of all in the former Soviet republics, the newspaper writes. A task for Washington is to accept the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin would never agree to be the United States’ junior partner, a role so much imposed on Moscow.
But the main task for both is to spot accusing each other of seeking to block or upset the relations.
The United States president is generally more free during his second term in office, since he faces no further presidential race, political scientist Boris Makarenko told the Kommersant. “It means that in the next four years Barack Obama would be ready for more daring options. It gives a new chance to continue resetting relations with Moscow” (8).
References:
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/