Will Obama Make It To A Second Term?

Image: Illustration: Vidyanand Kamat; Images: shutterstock

The reason why [President Barack] Obama will win the re-election — if he wins — will be because there is no alternative. The Republican Party lacks a strong candidate and so far the people who have been getting all the media coverage, or rather ridicule, are on the fringe: Such as Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain [who has withdrawn his candidacy]. The problem with Mitt Romney is that the strong, conservative Christian Republican Party base will not probably fall in line with him because he’s a Mormon. Conservative Christians consider Mormonism to be a cult. So he’s not acceptable to a significant segment of the Republican electorate even though he’s a very good candidate and he’s very balanced and very smart.

If Obama wins, it’ll also be because he has basically helped the economy to recover. The fact is, at one point we were headed for the next Depression and that has not happened. Unemployment levels are now dropping. US foreign policy is no longer seen as an aggression, unlike during the [former President George W.] Bush days. The world began to hate America because Bush took such a strong stance against Islam and some countries. Obama fixed all that and therefore deserves a lot of credit. I also have to give Obama high credit for bringing in a very diverse cabinet, which includes an amazing number of Indian-Americans and people of high calibre from many other backgrounds. This diversity has made the White House open and inclusive. He’s done more for the Indian community from this perspective than any other president and so has earned the vote of the community. But on the other hand, when it comes to immigration, he’s lost it.

I give Republicans a lot more credit for being sensitive to the needs of the skilled immigrant and being supportive of bringing engineers and scientists from India and China. Obama has said the right words but it’s basically lip service. Take the Start Up Visa Act: When it came down to it, he didn’t support the legislation. Instead, he asked for comprehensive immigration reform. It was all or nothing. But comprehensive immigration reform won’t happen because of the issue of offering amnesty to undocumented workers. By taking such a weak position, he didn’t make any progress whatsoever. The bill to remove the per country limit, which was passed recently, received strong support from Republicans. I don’t give Obama any credit for this. It was the Republicans who made it happen.

Obama has also been a very poor communicator. For someone with his background, he’s been completely ineffective. He’s allowed the Republican Party to dominate the dialogue. Besides, he used all of his bullets on healthcare reform and didn’t get any other major legislation through. He’s let ObamaCare define his presidency. And ObamaCare is a weak bill. It’s neither here nor there.

But in the end, who America elects in 2012 will come down to the emotion of voters in the last moment and how they feel about the candidate. It won’t be about policies. It’ll all depend on the rhetoric at the time. That’s the unpredictability about politics.  

So what really matters is who’s up against Obama. That’s what is going to make or break the election. If it’s Newt Gingrich, and that’s a possibility, he has the ability to alienate a large part of the population. Gingrich is absolutely brilliant, but he also has the ability to alienate people. Romney is balanced and his policies are right in the centre. Though he is acceptable to a majority of the American electorate, he will alienate conservative Christians because of his religious beliefs.

I’m independent, directly in the centre, and could vote for either party. I voted for Obama in 2008 because there was so much momentum about an African-American president. Based on what I see today, I’d vote for Obama because I don’t see a good alternative. But it really depends on who’s on the other side. If you have Romney and some other very strong Republican running against Obama, I may well vote for them. If there was a good alternative I won’t vote for Obama because I am not happy with our President.   

But it could just be that Obama wins because there’s no alternative and people believe that the devil they know is better than the devil they don’t know. 

(As told to Sujata Srinivasan)

Vivek Wadhwa is a senior research associate, Harvard Law School; director of research, Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization, Duke University; visiting scholar, University of California, Berkeley. He is also a columnist at Business Week and Washington Post.