Victorious Republicans will have to tread carefully

After the Republicans' sweeping gains in US midterm elections, Alan Philps says they will have to ensure they do not remain defined simply by opposition to president Obama.

President Barack Obama now has Republicans controlling both the senate and the house of representatives for his final two years in office. Photo: Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP

Elections come so thick and fast in the United States that it is easy to get confused. No sooner are the votes counted than the pundits are explaining how today’s winners will be losers in two years time. Meanwhile, Washington’s eyes are fixed on the horizon to see which cowboy will come riding over the ridge to sort out the nation’s dysfunctional capital.

The Democrats’ drubbing in the midterm elections is, in one sense, nothing new. It is normal for the president’s party to feel the voters’ anger, particularly in the second term. Even Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who are credited with near magical political powers, could not keep control of Congress.

But Mr Obama’s repudiation this week is more serious. The president’s brand has become so toxic that Democratic candidates asked him not to campaign for them. One candidate for the Senate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, tied herself in knots by refusing to say whether she had voted for Mr Obama.

This is even more surprising given that the US economy is recovering, and the president has a good story to tell on his economic management, even though this is not reflected in any improvement in living standards for the majority of people. His signature reform of heath care, bitterly opposed by the Republicans and subject to many technical glitches, is now gaining popularity. As the sun begins to set on the Obama presidency even his friends are speaking openly about how his character is ill-suited to the presidency. “There’s no doubt that there’s a theatrical nature to the presidency that he resists,” said David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s chief campaign adviser in 2008. “Sometimes he can be negligent in the symbolism.”

Why would a Democratic insider such as Mr Axelrod say such a thing? With the prospect of Hillary Clinton’s running for president in 2016, now is the time to make clear that being a Democrat is not a problem for the electorate; a candidate with a bouncier character could beat the Republicans.

Foreign governments, and non-state actors such as ISIL, are likely to conclude that power has now ebbed from the White House and Mr Obama is a lame duck president. The history of past presidents does not fully support that conclusion. After Bill Clinton lost control of Congress two years into his presidency, he still managed to push through some of the signature bills of his presidency – notably on welfare reform. But Mr Clinton is a master of the type of cajoling that get things done in Washington, an area where Mr Obama does not shine.

Power, however, is not the only commodity that counts in Washington. The other is blame. For six years the Republicans have prospered by opposing every move that Mr Obama has taken, both out of principle and to placate an extreme fringe who see a black man with the middle name Hussein as somehow illegitimate in the office of president.

But amid the Republican rejoicing, there is a recognition that the vote on Tuesday ought to mark the end of six years of obstructionism. The Republicans are now the party of power and cannot hope to win the presidency in 2016 if their record is simply banking their salaries and ensuring that nothing gets done. In a word, they need to ensure that their candidate for president does not get the blame for two more years of gridlock.

That is why the new power in Washington, the next Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, has been talking of ways to work with the president. The Republican consultant, Mike Murphy, puts his party’s task as being “a huge opportunity to recast our brand before 2016, when the terrain will swing back toward the Democrats”.

Sticking with the logic of opposition at all costs will open the way for Mrs Clinton, if she stands, to return to the White House in the 2016 election.

Mr Obama will not make things easy for the Republicans. He has his own legacy to polish and cannot afford to be seen as a pushover for the Right. In the teeth of Republican opposition, he has promised to issue an executive order making it easier for undocumented immigrants to remain in the country. This move is long planned but he stayed his hand before the midterm elections in order not to allow the Democrats to be cast as soft on illegal immigration.

So the political battle is not over, but the battle ground has changed. It is not about who has the power, but who can conquer the moral high ground in the two years to the presidential vote.

Other presidents in Mr Obama’s position have changed their focus to foreign affairs, most notably Ronald Reagan in his wooing of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Mr Obama’s path to a foreign affairs legacy is not so clear. His cautious response to the challenge of ISIL seems inadequate to destroy the jihadist threat. The Syrian crisis, with all parties inside and outside the country bent on pursuing war, is not amenable to either a peace process or a military solution. The chances of a breakthrough with Vladimir Putin of Russia seem close to nil. His administration has tried to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute and failed.

The potential game changer for Mr Obama’s legacy is the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme. The existing Senate is capable of torpedoing any nuclear deal worked out with Iran, just as much as the newly elected one that will sit in January. But will Iran be confident to pursue a deal with a lame duck president knowing it could be rejected by a Republican-dominated Senate? The question is impossible to say at the moment, with less than three weeks to go before the agreed deadline for a deal. What is clear is that the vote has added another layer of complexity to an already tangled issue.

Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs

Twitter: @aphilps