Starting early for 2012

A standoff with the legislative branch over the budget would seem hardly the best time for President Barack Obama to declare the start of his re-election campaign. The tussle with the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress over cuts in spending brought the federal government to the brink of a shutdown. But the announcement of his 2012 candidacy in the middle of this was less about finding the right political moment than about garnering finances for re-election — the second quarter of the year marks the beginning of a new fund-raising period under U.S election laws. All the same, it has turned the spotlight on Mr. Obama's leadership even as the White House struggled to bring about a last-minute compromise between the Republicans and Democrats on the budget.

This battle may eventually work to President Obama's political advantage if enough Americans see the Republicans as confrontational to the point of stopping the work of government. The harder part for the Democrats is to answer a more fundamental question: where is the change Mr. Obama promised during his inspirational 2008 presidential campaign? Americans are clearly disillusioned because the dynamism and hope Obama, the candidate, represented has been replaced by diffidence and over-caution in Obama, the President. The mood was evident when voters gave Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives and drastically cut back the Democratic majority in the Senate in November 2010.

Mr. Obama's approval rating of 62 per cent when he entered the White House has dropped to 46 per cent. The Libyan misadventure may push this down further. The latest let-down for his supporters is the decision to put Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, on trial by a military tribunal at the Guantanamo prison, instead of in a federal court. Coming just a day after he was declared the first official candidate for the 2012 election, it showed President Obama in poor light: he had promised during the last campaign to close down the camp within a year of taking office. The presidential election is still 20 months away.

No credible Republican contenders are in sight. Surprising though this may sound, of the many moving parts at work, the one to the incumbent's advantage is the economy. President Obama inherited an economy in deep crisis, but managed to keep it from sinking. Last month, the claim that the economic recovery was well on its way was buttressed by a fall in the unemployment rate to its lowest in two years. Elections in the U.S. are often about the state of the economy. Mr. Obama's political stock has been visibly degraded but all things considered, he remains the favourite for November 2012. Hindu News