Hillary Right To Want Out

After weeks of dithering, waffling and cloaking oneself in silence, the Obama White House has finally decided to speak out forcefully against the brutalities inflicted on Libya by its ruler, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. But why to do so at this late stage is a pertinent question. After media attention shifted to the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Col. Gadaffi has used the global blind spot he found himself in to effectively snuff out the already flickering candle of rebellion in the North African state. The rebels have been pushed back to their last stronghold of Benghazi and if the boasts are true, tomorrow will see their defeat in that city.

With the collapse of the rebellion imminent, the imposition of a no-fly to support it is like the umpire climbing into the ring after one of the boxers is already knock-out on the floor. David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy have been calling for international intervention for weeks now, but Barack Obama refused to support them. He even went so far as to send out his Secretary of Defence Robert Gates to rebuff publicly those clamouring for a no-fly zone, while fully aware of the fact that without the US intervention would be impossible. Yet inexplicably the US now wants a no-fly zone.

Until now, the members of the US Cabinet had kept the ranks closed, standing behind their President as is their duty. But in any organisation divisions will exist and this is true for the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most high-profile politician in the US besides President Obama, now appears to have had enough with the constant policy changes:

Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits. ...
Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.

I have not made a secret of my oppostion to intervention, but I should have mentioned that it is not the worst option. The worst option is not to make a decision, exactly what Mr. Obama has been doing - or not doing. Crises thrive on indecision, especially if that is the course of the mighty. The minnows cannot act and the wicked walk away with the prize. Foreign diplomats think in this manner:

The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week. When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.“Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”

So Ms. Clinton, a proud and - still - ambitious politician, can no longer abide the lack of courage amongst the inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And she's right to think about leaving them to their own mess. In the back of her mind, is she still pondering taking over the top job at some point? We can only wonder.

A New High (Or Should That Be Low?) In Government Incompetence?

One of the central tasks of government in the 21st century is to arrange for a stable and secure circulation of money. This is true of every government in every country in the world - except Scotland, which curiously has no government-sanctioned paper banknotes, only notes issued by seven retail banks. If the perception arises that the government can't issue money in a competent, trustworthy fashion, people will have to take refuge in other items of value. Fortunately, such a collapse of a nation's currency only happens in countries like Zimbabwe, where hyper-inflation has completely destabilized the Zimbabwe Dollar, which is now no longer issued at all. Most other countries, especially those in the West, are still to be trusted to supply secure money.

One of the few powers explicitly handed to the American Federal Government by the Constitution is "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures" (Article 1, section 8, paragraph 5). So what should we make of the following news?

"Because of a problem with the presses, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than 1 billion of them -- more than 10 percent of all existing U.S. cash -- in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas."

This is incompetence of a degree rarely seen at this high, powerful level of government. In order to make banknotes safer, it has made them so safe that they cannot be circulated at all. And this at the grand, total cost of $120 million and with all the notes together representing a value of $110 billion.

And this ought to have consequences for the American Fed's second attempt at quantitative easing (QE2). Quantative easing involves pumping money into the economy to lower long-term interest rates, usually by buying debt, an analogue to printing money. But this failure to actually print that money should give us pause at the Fed's or the government's ability to accomplish their goal. Unless this is a deliberate mistake to undermine trust in the value of the dollar, thereby stimulating inflation and perhaps lowering interest rates. But I'm not knowledgeable of economics to know whether this would work or not. What I am sure of is that Barack Obama is not nearly clever and dastardly enough to pull of such a Nixonian deception. So it seems that this money printing debacle is just incompetence, plain and simple.

The Republicans Gain Is Obama's Opportunity

The dominating strain of opinion about yesterday's US Congressional elections seems to be that it is a serious blow to President Obama and his chances for re-election in 2012. For instance, in his Election-Winners-and-Losers list Toby Harnden says:

LOSERS
1. Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan recovered after 1982 and Bill Clinton came back after 1994. But is Obama in the same league as either man? Right now, he looks like a one-term president.

Looking at the results of the vote it does indeed look like a damning rejection of Obama, the Democrats, and their policies. Gaining a majority in the House of Representatives is a coup for the Republicans and a major set-back for Obama's agenda. Eric Cantor, the current Republican minority whip, is already talking about repeabling Obama's healthcare bill as well as cutting spending. Ambitious new proposals like the anti-climate change bill are now also in danger of never getting past the House. With the Democrats holding on to their majority in the Senate, the ratification of treaties and appointments of judges and Cabinet members is unlikely to cause Obama many sleepless nights. But he will definitely have to scale back some of his other plans.

Yet, this should not be a problem and may even be a boon to him. One of the main consequences of the Democrats controlling both the presidency and the two Houses of Congress is that, in the minds of many Americans, they alone were responsible for the lack of any economic revival, as well as everything else that went wrong in the country. Obama and Vice-President Biden toured the country in the last weeks of the campaign season trying to convince voters that the powerless Republicans were somehow just as responsible as the party that actually controlled the strings of power in Washington. Needless to say, few Americans believed them. But now, with the Republicans in the majority in the House, blame can be spread around a little more credibly. This should make it easier for Obama to reclaim some of the 'change' glamour that he has lost over the last two years, by pointing out that the Republicans are shutting the gate on his agenda.

What's more, the GOP is not exactly a united party at the moment. The rise of the Tea Party has frightened a lot of moderate Republicans while a great number of ultra-conservative Tea Partiers have been send to Congress. These two wings will have to spend at least some time sorting out who takes top spot. This leaves open the chance for the Democrats and Obama to split the Republican party along Tea Party / non Tea Party lines by introducing bills that some moderates might want to support.

Finally, the success of the Tea Party has shown us two closely related things that might benefit Obama in 2012. The first is the obvious power Sarah Palin now holds as the darling of the Tea Party movement. She will almost certainly run for President in two years, and at the moment seems to be the favourite to win the Republican nomination. The second is that Americans do not, to use a cliche, suffer fools gladly. The defeat of Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell in Nevada and Delaware respectively is a sign that voters still expect at least a modicum of intelligence in their politicians. Palin's cup did not run over in this department in 2008 and it's not at all clear that she's improved since then. Should she win the GOP spot next time round, Obama might just have a cake-walk, just like Reagan had in 1982 and Clinton in 1996.