Several commentators from European newspapers agree on one thing: President Barack Obama no longer has to worry about being re-elected. In his second term, therefore, Obama will be better able to focus on his job.
“The second term is free from the pressure of reelection. The president we love has nothing to lose this time,” declares Laurent Joffrin in France’s Le Nouvel Observateur. (“Obama Re-elected: What a Relief!”, Nov. 7, 2012)
Unlike 2008, the 2012 election was more about fear of Mitt Romney than hope for Barack Obama. “Four years ago, we had Obamania; this year, Romneyphobia.” (Ibid.)
The fear of a Mitt Romney presidency was what motivated enough people to show up and vote for Barack Obama, agrees Angelo Aquaro, writing in Italy’s La Repubblica. Mitt Romney had been caught privately dismissing 47 percent of Americans as a bunch of sponges. Then, on November 6, 2012 we had what “seems like a story of the last becoming the first; it’s the 47 percent winning back over the 1 percent, it’s the victory of that America that Mitt Romney reviled.” (“Women, Youth, Factory Workers, Immigrants: ‘The Other America’ Re-elects Obama”, Nov. 7, 2012)
In 2008, Barack Obama was the candidate of excitement and hope. In 2012, his victory was greeted with a huge sigh of relief, echoes Viriato Soromenho-Marques in Portugal’s Diário de Notícias. Unlike the return of the Spanish Inquisition in Europe, re-labeled now as “austerity measures,” an Obama presidency will lean more toward “priming the pump.” Obama knows “that the government should promote anti-cyclical policies, counteracting the private sector’s incapability to invest and the risk of tearing the economic fabric.” (“From Excitement to Relief”, Nov. 8, 2012)
Of course, this “priming the pump” might lead to serious inflation. Mitt Romney wanted to replace Ben Bernanke as chief of the “Federal” Reserve. Romney as president would have favored bringing the Inquisition (“austerity measures”) across the Atlantic and here to the United States. That would have kept down the inflation but would have put the burden on the poor. With the second term of Barack Obama, we at least won’t see so much of that. (Instead the burden will be more on those who put meager savings into bank accounts paying less than 1 percent interest.)
Antonio Carlucci, writing in Italy’s L’Espresso, is hopeful. Barack Obama could wind up being Abraham Lincoln the Second (but let’s hope without any John Wilkes Booth this time). Obama could “go down in history. Rebuilding the country that had literally folded from a financial crisis caused directly by the behavior of the world of Wall Street and by the culture that had emerged — namely, that wealth could essentially be produced by the paper of financial trading and not the production of goods and services useful to the community — can bring the president into history books alongside those who have made America great.” (“Obama Makes History”, Nov. 6, 2012)
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