【09.11.22 泰晤士报】Barack Obama dream fades as China visit fails to bring change

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Barack Obama dream fades as China visit fails to bring change
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6926987.ece

November 22, 2009 Tony Allen-Mills in New York


Critics said Obama had nothing to show for his trip to Beijing (Jason Reed/Reuters)

Gazing serenely from the Great Wall of China last week, President Barack Obama appeared to be making the most of one of the supreme perks of White House occupancy — a private guided tour of Asia’s most spectacular tourist destination.

White House aides exulted that perfectly choreographed pictures of this moment would make front pages around the world. Yet an experience Obama declared to be “magical” turned sour as he returned home to a spreading domestic revolt that is fanning Democratic unease.

It was not just that the US media have suddenly turned a lot more sceptical about a president with grand ambitions to reshape politics at home and abroad — even one previously friendly newspaper noted dismissively: “Obama goes to China, brings home a T-shirt.”

Nor was the steady decline in the president’s approval ratings — which fell below 50% for the first time in a Gallup poll last week — the main cause of White House angst. Obama remains more popular than either Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton a year after their elections, and both presidents eventually cruised to second terms.

The real problem may be Obama’s friends — or rather, those among his formerly most enthusiastic supporters who are now having second thoughts.

The doubters are suddenly stretching across a broad section of the Democratic party’s natural constituency. They include black congressional leaders upset by the sluggish economy; women and Hispanics appalled by concessions made to Republicans on healthcare; anti-war liberals depressed by the debate over troops for Afghanistan; and growing numbers of blue-collar workers who are continuing to lose their jobs and homes.

Obama’s Asian adventure perceptibly increased the murmurings of dissent when he returned to Washington last week, having failed to wring any public concessions from China on any major issue.

For most Americans, the most talked-about moment of the trip was not the Great Wall visit but his low bow to Emperor Akihito of Japan, which the president’s right-wing critics assailed as “a spineless blunder” and excessively deferential.

While some commentators acknowledged that behind-the-scenes progress may have been made on issues such as North Korea, financial stability and human rights, even the pro-Obama New York Times noted in an editorial yesterday that “the trip wasn’t all that we had hoped it would be”.

Nor have the president’s domestic policies proved everything Congressman John Conyers wanted. The prominent liberal black Democrat startled colleagues last week by launching a direct assault on Obama’s handling of healthcare reforms, which were facing an important Senate vote last night.

Asked on Thursday if Obama had provided sufficient leadership on so divisive an issue, Conyers responded tartly: “Of course not ... bowing down to every nutty right-wing proposal about healthcare ... is doing a disservice to the Barack Obama that I first met.”

Tension over healthcare and what many Democratic legislators now view as neglect of economic issues reached an unexpected breaking point when members of the Congressional Black Caucus — previously regarded as unshakeable Obama loyalists — staged a startling rebellion over what they regarded as a lack of economic support for the AfricanAmerican community.

A vote on proposed financial reforms had to be shelved at the last minute as black caucus members threatened to oppose it as a protest against broader economic policy. The revolt came as new reports showed that one in seven Americans were struggling to pay for food; that mortgage delinquencies are continuing to rise with almost 2m homeowners more than three months overdue on their payments; and that unemployment rose to 10.2% in October.

While many Democrats remain unswervingly loyal to Obama — and would rather blame President George W Bush for most of America’s ills — there has been no escaping a damaging sense of disappointment in liberal circles that a historic presidency is failing to deliver on its promises.

Others are disturbed that the president’s promises to clean up Washington’s “politics as usual” have dissolved in a familiar murk of cronyism and political patronage.

Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, noted last week that the age-old tradition of presidents handing out ambassadorships as rewards for campaign donors had continued undiminished under Obama, who has so far rewarded more than 40 of his key fundraisers with plum diplomatic jobs.

“There is a bit of disappointment, largely because expectations were raised by the ‘change’ theme of Obama’s campaign,” said Johnson.

Perhaps most depressing of all for a small number of influential Washingtonians was the little-noticed resignation of Gregory Craig, Obama’s former White House counsel, who is widely believed in legal circles to have been made a scapegoat for the administration’s difficulties in resolving the future of Guantanamo Bay.

Craig was a key campaign aide to Obama and played the role of Senator John McCain in rehearsals for television debates. Charged with implementing the president’s instruction to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo, he fell foul of Obama aides who had failed to predict the wave of public hostility to the prospect of Al-Qaeda inmates being shipped to American soil.

Elizabeth Drew, a presidential biographer and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, described the effective dumping of Craig as “the shabbiest episode of Obama’s presidency”. Drew blamed the “small Chicago crowd” that surrounds the president for undermining Craig’s position with a series of anonymous leaks — notably suggesting that the lawyer was “too close to human rights groups”.

This kind of White House infighting is par for the course in most presidencies — but Obama was not supposed to be the kind of man who jettisons old friends at the first hint of trouble.

All this provides the Republicans with an unexpected propaganda bonanza. “We don’t need to slam Obama — his own folks are doing it for us,” one gleeful conservative declared.

The Republicans’ own divisions — magnified now that Sarah Palin, the defeated vice-presidential candidate, is crossing middle America with a new conservative manifesto under her arm — are nonetheless going largely unexamined as the Democrats implode.

Last week Republican governors meeting in Texas talked openly of winning all the states due for midterm elections next year.

The news is not all bad for Obama — America remains enchanted with his family, and many Democrat insiders are convinced that the party’s internal squabbling will melt away at the first hint of real economic recovery.

“Do Democrats have to worry about turnout and voter intensity? You bet,” said Peter Hart, a leading pollster. “But it’s nothing that lowering unemployment by two points can’t solve.”

TOP FLOPS

Israel — Obama wanted: A freeze on settlement building as a precondition for the resumption of Palestinian peace talks.
He got: An Israeli brush-off. Construction of a new Jewish housing complex began last week.

Iran — Obama wanted: A deal to ship low-enriched uranium to Russia to curb Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.
He got: Another brush-off. Tehran reneged last week.

China — Obama wanted: Concessions on climate, currency rates, trade and human rights.
He got: A bland statement with no firm commitments and no mention of internet censorship or Tibet.

ChinaErection

带来了变化，中国国际地位的变化