Obama is ordinary, an interveiw with C.Krauthammer
In a SPIEGEL interview, Charles Krauthammer, the leading voice of America’s conservative intellectuals, discusses Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, the president’s failures and the state of the United Nations and the international community.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize?
Charles Krauthammer: It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it’s not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity.
SPIEGEL: Do you basically think Obama is going to be a one-term president?
Krauthammer: No, I think he has a very good chance of being reelected. For two reasons. First, there’s no real candidate on the other side, and you can’t beat something with nothing. Secondly, it’ll depend on the economy — and just from American history, in the normal economic cycles, presidents who have their recessions at the beginning of their first term get reelected (Reagan, Clinton, the second Bush), and presidents who have them at the end of their first term don’t (Carter, the first Bush). Obama will lose a lot of seats in next year’s Congressional election, but the economy should be on the upswing in 2012.
SPIEGEL: Is the conservative movement in the United States in decline?
Krauthammer: When George W. Bush won in 2004, there was lots of stuff written that about the end of liberalism and the death of the Democratic Party. Look where we are now.
SPIEGEL: A Democrat is back in the White House, the party also controls Congress.
Krauthammer: Exactly. We see the usual overreading of history whenever one side loses. Look, there are cycles in American politics. US cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial presidential system. We don’t have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself. We have no idea who will be the Republican nominee in 2012. The party structures are very fluid. We have a history of political parties being thrown out of the White House after two terms — as has happened every single time with only one exception (Ronald Reagan) since World War II. The idea that one party is done in the US is silly. The Republicans got killed in 2006 and 2008, but they will be back.
SPIEGEL: The party lacks a strong, intelligent leader.
Krauthammer: Yes. And if the Republicans don’t have one by 2012, they’ll lose and they’ll have to wait till 2016. It could take eight years to develop. You know, people say — the White House was pushing this idea — that the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the opposition because there’s no other leader. Well, ask yourself, in 2001 and 2002 and 2003, who was the leader of the Democratic Party? There was none. We don’t have a parliamentary system in which opposition leaders are designated.
Very interesting, he also sees no clear leadership for Republicans.
