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AUSTRALIA

America's choice through Australian eyes

  • 01 November 2012

If citizens of other nations could vote, it should be Obama by a mile! But Obama’s many supporters abroad have wondered uneasily whether it just might go the other way. Recent polling was suggesting a cliffhanger in the swing states that will determine the outcome. I now sense that superstorm Sandy will save Obama, but it could still be close.     

This is a vital election for Australia, as we begin to digest what the reshaping global power balance in the Asian Century means for us. The emergent decline of American global hegemony forces Australia to move beyond the easy simplicities of lockstep strategic alliance with the US combined with highly profitable favoured economic ties with a resurgent China. 

As the US feels the psychological pangs of power contraction, Australia needs to help her weather her midlife crisis. It would be easier with Obama than Romney. Obama – and perhaps Hilary Clinton after 2016 – are in a better position to use the power of the presidency to help guide the US through this transition because they have a better grasp of the challenge for America of a rapidly changing world. 

Those disappointed in Obama’s performance in office since 2008 underestimate the huge constraints on him. These include an often hostile Congress, a deep-rooted public belief that the world exists to serve US interests and a false ideological consciousness of the proper roles of the state and private sectors. 

Obama proved his strength and patriotism through the symbolically vital removal of Osama bin Laden. On this, we now know that, though a naked Osama bin Laden with his hands up in surrender would not have been shot, killing him was the presidentially approved plan in every other possible contingency. For most Americans, this was justice seen to be done. 

Obama’s evident empathy towards the plight of poorer people in an economy in trouble has been reaffirmed by this week’s storm. Memories of the federally mishandled Hurricane Katrina of 2005 were not far beneath the surface, as shown by the Republican Governor of New Jersey's unstinting praise for Obama’s role in this week’s crisis. The Governor said all that needs to be said. Obama is too shrewd a politician to leave any room for suggestions that he might be politically exploiting the crisis. But the suspension of campaigning plays to his advantage. 

Romney has been forced in recent months to turn turtle, presenting himself as the
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