Democrats vs. Republicans, the Men versus the boys

True, the next President of the United States of America will be elected by the citizens of the USA to govern their country. True, the next President of the United States of America will style himself the leader of the world and true, the lobbies which placed him in power or closed ranks around him will dictate his foreign policy.

It is always amusing to hear American politicians talking about "The President's programmes" and what "The President" wants, plans and desires, for it is by now patently obvious that the USA is a country run by lobbies which pander to the whims and caprices of the weapons, drugs, pharmaceutical, banking, industrial cliques with their fingers in Washington's pies. Abroad.

At any given time, one or more of these cliques will be pushing for policies to further their corporate interests. Let us take, for instance, Barack "Hey I won the Nobel Peace Prize" Obama who promptly gave the order to launch a vicious attack against Libya, whose leader Muammar al-Qathafi was to receive a UN prize for his excellent humanitarian record.

Why? Because his pan-African policies had cheesed off practically all of the US lobbies and his sovereign fund and plentiful oil supplies of excellent quality were large enough to attract the beady little eyes of David "The taxpayer doesn't pay for my gardener" Cameron, his sick little sidekick William "If only they knew" Hague and the wannabe Napoleons across La Manche in Paris.

While Obama's Libya policy was a sickening reminder of the sheer hypocrisy present in the external policy of the USA and while the murderous and illegal attack broke practically every rule in the book, it is also true that the British and French also caked themselves in doo-doos and sullied the image of their policies for decades to come. After Libya, never, ever trust NATO again. Specially not the FUKUS Axis (France, UK, US).

However, that said, and as we shall no doubt find out in the forthcoming years through the release of political memoirs, not everything does the President of the United States of America control and those who belittle the influence of Hillary "War Zone" Clinton in the State Department are naïve. In fact she turned out as bad as, or worse than, her predecessor, Condoleeza Rice - two women who tarnished the image of the United States of America in the eyes of the international community for a good many years to come.

With her removed after the election (she has promised to take a break), let us reassess the contribution of President Obama over four years and see if a change to the GOP is worth thinking about. For a start, those who claim that real change can be brought about within four years either do not know what they are saying or else are manipulating for vote-catching purposes. The minimum cycle, according to established vectors of political science, is six years, anything else is electioneering nonsense.

Even so, and in times of extraordinary economic duress, fighting through the most serious world economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Presidency of Barack Obama has achieved some monumental successes. For a start, he has shown more diplomatic skills than his sidekick in the State Department, famous for her branding Russia's upholding of international law as "despicable" and for gloating over the news of the death of persons abroad.

Barack Obama has handled his international meetings with great skill, creating a pleasant and open professional atmosphere, preparing the ground to work, keeping all options open and insulting nobody. He has been an excellent figurehead for the United States of America and a President all Americans can be proud of. His delivery is intelligent and articulate, his demeanour is diligent and low-key, he is a person who can shine in any environment, be it meeting heads of state or government, schoolchildren, miners, metalworkers or the homeless.

The bottom line is that Barack Obama cares. And this will to fight for the average man, woman and child, fighting through one of the most vicious economic storms his country has known, showing mettle and determination and common decency throughout, has despite all odds produced remarkable results, and let us not underestimate the mess he inherited from the Republicans after eight years of the Bush regime (making America synonymous with torture, concentration camps, sodomy, urinating in food, illegal detention, massacring prisoners with hounds, sleep deprivation, murder, strafing civilians with military hardware, waterboarding...).

Despite facing the most cataclysmic adverse economic conditions, Barack Obama nevertheless managed to put through key legislation in a number of areas, laying the foundations for the future for hundreds of millions of American citizens: he expanded access to medical care, provided subsidies for those who could not afford healthcare, expanded the children's health insurance program (CHIP), righted wrongs endemic in the healthcare insurance system, he created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, protected consumers using credit, improved the food safety system, improved women's rights in the workplace, protected women, protected children, protected veterans, protected the poor, invested in green energy...

Despite the economic hardship, he has invested 12 billion dollars for people with disabilities to get an education, 789 billion dollars in the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (economic stimulus plan), created more jobs than two terms of the Bush regime...

Institutionally, he promised change and has started defending the citizens against the lobbies. The Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act attacks fraud and wasteful spending in the defence procurement and contracting system; the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restores basic protection against pay discrimination for women in the workplace; Recovery.gov tracks spending, provides transparency and enables the citizens to report fraud, waste, or abuse.

He promised and he delivered, despite the immense and terrible inheritance created by eight years of Republicanism.

We could go on and on and on here, but an internet article is generally at most two pages long. It is sufficient to see the record of that foul-mouthed oaf, Romney, who takes half an hour or less to insult his hosts, say something abrasive or arrogant or to create hostility and we see the international community would be far more receptive to American companies and initiatives under Obama than under something like that. As for Paul Ryan, well just imagine Mitt Romney goes to meet his Mormon maker.

Would THAT be a fitting President of the United States of America? I don't think so.

So the citizens of the United States of America have two clear-cut choices: the implementation of policies which will see America and its economy grow with responsible and sustainable policies managed by an intelligent and expert team which cares for the people (Obama) and a couple of foul-mouthed oafs who have no idea what they are doing, whose election campaign is based upon...foul-mouthing (figures) and whose "policies" are electioneering promises and nothing else. Hardly responsible, not trustworthy, pie-in-the-sky vapid nonsense from two wannabe politicians whose claims to the White House are perhaps the flimsiest that the USA has seen in the last fifty years.

That anyone could be considering the GOP again after the nightmare of the Bush regime, that anyone could be considering the Republican ticket after seeing the extremely weak, insubstantial and amateur team that the Romney-Ryan duo evidently is and with the Bush-era monsters lurking in the background again, to be honest the nearer to a clean sweep the people of America give to Obama, the more certain it is that his policies will succeed. And with them, the American people.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru