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A poisoned chalice

By James Cumes - posted Monday, 7 July 2008


We now have a whole cluster of bubbles bursting more or less simultaneously. They all belong to a speculative system which was deeply and fundamentally flawed.

No matter how brilliant an Obama or McCain Administration may be, it is unlikely to be able to redress the situation in the short space of a single four-year term. In 2012 we will still be living with the fallout from one of the greatest financial catastrophes of all time. The miseries will be domestic to the United States - and other countries - and they will also be global.

At that point a new Franklin Delano Roosevelt may be most desperately needed; and the situation is still likely to be such that the miseries will then be blamed not on the incumbent’s predecessors but on the incumbent himself - and his party.

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After Hoover’s four-year term ended in 1932, the Republicans were out of office until 1969 except for Eisenhower’s two terms from 1953 to 1961. Even Eisenhower was elected more as a heroic World War II general than as a Republican.

So it might prove to be for the party which provides the President starting next year. There is some suggestion that some Republican strategists might have contrived to support or at least not attack Obama too vigorously during the primaries because he is more vulnerable than Hillary Clinton. Those vulnerabilities might ensure the election of McCain as a highly respected war hero who has some of the qualifications - and appeal - of an Eisenhower.

If McCain is elected, he will drink from the poisoned chalice from which Obama and Clinton fought so hard to sip. After a nightmarish single term, McCain and the Republicans might then be out for perhaps most of the next 20 years.

If Obama manages to defeat McCain, his entire term will be spent trying to reduce the miseries of the American people and restore the strategic power and authority of the United States. In neither of these tasks is he likely to succeed except to prepare the way for his successor.

In this context, what might Hillary Clinton’s prospects be? Much will depend on how close her association is with Obama in office. If they are close, her political star might fall along with his. If she manages to keep him at arm’s length, then she might have some political future. However, her Democratic Party is likely to suffer the same fate as the Republican Party after the Great Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s. They are likely to roam the political wilderness for years, perhaps decades, as the Republicans did between 1933 and 1969.

So her aspirations for the highest office might be seen to have ended with her courageous fight in the Democratic primaries of 2008.

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As for Obama, one intriguing question is whether he should have waited to make his bid for the Presidency until 2012 or later.

At 47, he could have waited another 10 or 15 years before aspiring to the highest political office. He could have allowed Hillary or another Democrat to drink from the poisoned chalice in 2009; but he would then have had to live with a Democratic Party which might not have recovered until he was in his 70s.

Perhaps it was better that he should try now. If he becomes President in January 2009, he will be faced with a complex of problems similar to those which confronted Roosevelt before and - let’s not forget - during World War II and then in restructuring not only the American economy but in playing America’s full part in restructuring the global economy. All of this in the next few years will have to be tackled in ways even more challenging than before and after World War II.

Perhaps he will meet and beat these challenges. There is just a chance that he will, with the assistance of spirited associates and advisers. Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be one of the most accomplished politicians - of any gender - of her time. She might help guide the United States through as rough a political, social, economic and strategic patch as her country has ever known. If she and Obama or, for that matter, McCain and his associates are able to restore their country to its former greatness that will be a legacy to rank with the finest achievements of the greatest American Administrations of the past.

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About the Author

James Cumes is a former Australian ambassador and author of America's Suicidal Statecraft: The Self-Destruction of a Superpower (2006).

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