With the clinching of the Texas primary, Mitt Romney's Republican nomination to challenge Barack Obama for the US presidency this November, is assured. Less assured however is the spelling of Romney's campaign team, who just put out a mobile phone app called “A Better Amercia.” Indeed there is a general lack of assurance about this whole presidential contest, that goes far beyond which man is likely to win. This fundamental lack of confidence, not just among Americans but internationally, is in the US political system itself. Can anyone feel certain that, short of plunging the United States into ill-considered overseas wars, a White House incumbent can actually make any difference? Barack Obama's administration has turned into the vacuum presidency, in which virtually all the policies with which he won office have been asphyxiated. Not since Jimmy Carter's 1977 victory had there been such high hopes of a new US leader. In fact, because of Obama's ethnicity and his undoubted ability as an orator, the expectations of this young, seemingly resolute and charismatic politician were considerably higher. “Yes we can” was an inspiring campaign slogan. Now four years on, the legions of young Americans who worked for his campaign and supported him at the ballot box are rightly thinking “No you couldn't”. For the Arab world, Obama's “New beginning” Cairo speech on June 4, 2009 appeared to herald the most exciting and profound shift in US foreign policy. Even as Obama had prepared to move into the Oval Office the previous December, Israel had been conducting its murderous assault of Gaza. America, it seemed, had had enough. Its bright new president accepted the injustices and ignorance of Washington's Middle East policy and was going to change it. But all that happened was that he pulled the US military out of a ruinously expensive occupation of Iraq. To be fair, not all the blame lies with Obama. On the domestic front his policies were challenged by fellow Democrats who held majorities in Congress, so that in his first two years his policy agenda advanced hardly at all. The mid-term elections saw the Democrats lose control of the House and with it any chance to drive through the big changes he promised. These included healthcare for all, the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the defense of labor rights and the reform of the draconian Patriot Act. Mitt Romney ought to be pushing at an open door. However, he is now the figurehead for a Republican Party increasingly dominated by the simplistic and uncompromising Tea Party movement, with its instinctive support for Zionism. Big business is pouring money directly and indirectly into his campaign. His own background in the ruthless world of private equity qualifies him to understand the capitalist ethic that drives America. However, it appears to divorce him from sympathy for the little guy, who placed so much hope and faith in his country's seemingly radical first black president.Even if Obama has become a victim of unrealistically high expectations, the extent of his political failures, not least in the Middle East, is nevertheless all too real. __
