As happens from time to time, the present American presidential election process is an unorthodox one, since barring any unpredictable occurrence, the Democratic candidate is already known. Popular and media interest and excitement therefore presently focus on the race among the Republican contenders for that party’s candidacy. And Saturday’s South Carolina primary certainly added to the excitement with the somewhat unexpected surge of support for former Speaker of the House Newt Gringrich to finish (40% to 28%) well ahead of the other main contender, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Romney’s reputation has been that of a liberal Republican, with a special emphasis on his having introduced a form of universal health care in Massachusetts. He has obviously felt that this would be a plus against his opponents in the Republican primaries, and that it would have salience in terms of his being portrayed, even in states that are relatively conservative, as a successful administrator. Romney seems also to have banked on what he, and others on the liberal wing of the party, felt was a relative decline in Gingrich’s popularity as more and more has been revealed not only about his activities as a lobbyist using his House Speaker credentials and connections, but also about his relations with females that have led to a few divorces.
But Romney seems not to have fully taken into account Gingrich’s now well-acknowledged reputation for rising from presumed political burials after his various misdemeanours. He also seems to have mispitched in emphasizing his reputation as a successful businessman in the field of equity investments, in a climate of popular despondency about prospects for survival in the recession that has affected the United States. And he may have underestimated the perception of himself, which Gingrich has painted and exploited, as a person enriching himself at the expense of those who have become unemployed through business closures in the process of economic reorganization. This was a short propaganda jump, for Gingrich, of placing Romney virtually in the pantheon of Ponzi and similar financial schemers about whom Americans have become extremely disgruntled. Romney’s responses to this seem to have underestimated the depth of South Carolinians‘ conservatism in the context of recession, and thus failed to sufficiently shape his appeal to that sentiment. The historical card of Middle American admiration for self-made businessmen could not play well in that environment.
Gingrich, on the other hand, has probably surprised himself by the extent of his victory. He has, of course, had a reputation as a first-class orator, and an intellectual capable of turning arguments to his own advantage. His performance in the campaign so far has been to insist that, as a self-made person, there is nothing negative or sinful in functioning as a lobbyist, or what Americans sometimes call an influence peddler; to insist that the American people have forgiven him for the misdemeanours for which he was constrained to leave the House of Representatives; and to insist, particularly in the debate in South Carolina, that his personal problems as far as his relations with women are concerned, are merely being exploited by the media for their own financial and political ends. His victory seems to have justified his strategy, though some of the critics warn that the extent of conservatism of South Carolina Republicans is hardly reflective of the majority of the wider American community. Yet the margin of victory seems to suggest that there is more despondency in the American public at present than may have been thought.
The Republican campaign now moves to Florida, where early polls have already given Gingrich quite a reasonable lead. He is painting Republican and Democratic (more specifically President Obama) opponents as incapable of understanding the depth of the effects of the recession on the thinking of the American people, and their perception of being in the grip of special interests benefiting substantially in a time of recession. And he has focused on the Congress (of which he was a longstanding member) as a playing games with, and divorced from, the people. No doubt his hope would be that the short-term effects of the recession, if not the recession itself, persevere until next November. And from that perspective, his position is not unlike that of Romney, to the extent that Romney is portraying himself as one capable of taking a new policy approach to the present condition; and on his record as Massachusetts governor, and that of a successful businessman, leading the country to growth again. On the other hand Romney is less inclined than Gingrich to blame other countries, like China, for what many Americans see as the beginnings of their country’s demise.
But recent indications are that the American economy is beginning to show signs of an upturn, with moderate increases in both growth and employment. Obama is also seeking to convince the electorate that after many years of non-action in the face of China’s penetration of world markets, and of reckless American adventurism particularly under the last ten years of Republican administration, he has been taking a more assertive policy stance. He insists that his administration has been has been the first to take steps to regularize the trade relationship between the US and China. And secondly, he claims that after excessive military expenditure in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his administration is conducting a withdrawal policy that will not only redirect government expenditure, but also minimize the American presence in various parts of the globe, and reassure the American people that their children will not be as committed to overseas action as they have been in recent decades.
Whether Obama’s own political strategy is viable against the Republicans probably depends on a continued economic upturn during this year. He will also have to be seeking to consolidate various ethnic groups which he had in his camp during the last election, in particular the Latinos, many of whom consider themselves to have been upwardly mobile and desperately fear continued recession. The Florida Republican primary may well give an indication of the sentiment of the ethnic diversity of the American people, as distinct from the more ethnically uniform (bar the black population likely to be Democrats) South Carolina.
