The 110th meeting of the American Political Science Association was held in Washington late last month. The thought of several thousand political scientists getting together to yack is not everybody's idea of fun, but it's always fascinating.
There are business meetings and receptions and prizes are awarded. The heart of the exercise are the "panels" where new research is presented and new ideas first take flight or are shot down. Topics range from the ordinary - Local Elections in France, for instance, or Changes in the Study of Medieval Law. Some raise questions: Do the Rich Deserve their Wealth? Feeling Gay? Indeed, sexual politics is always popular: Imagining Queer Futures was balanced by Queers Past and Queerer Futures. But the most interesting dealt with U.S. President Barack Obama's leadership.
Most American academics, like most Canadian ones, drift to the left side of the political spectrum. They tend to support Obama there and to criticize Harper here. But noticeable by its absence was any enthusiastic support for Obama. With presidential approval rating hovering in the low 40 per cent range for the past year, supporters have turned to making excuses and apologizing for their man.
One can see why. The national debt has risen 50 per cent over what had accumulated during the previous two centuries. But this was because of the Great Recession, supporters say, and was not his fault. Obamacare? True, the roll-out was a mess, premiums are far higher than expected, patient choices are fewer and hundreds of billions have been added to the national debt. But it's still too soon to tell, say his supporters. Going golfing with a big grin after a sober press conference following the gruesome butchery of James Foley was not indecent, as critics claimed. It showed the terrorists that we would carry on as usual.
But even committed supporters agreed that saying the U.S. "didn't have a strategy yet" to deal with the Islamic State was a problem. Richard Engel of NBC was widely quoted: the military commanders were "apoplectic" at the president's remark that they had no way of dealing with a 20,000-man terrorist army.
Supporters said Obama made a Freudian slip. What he meant was that the Saudis and Egyptians and Iraqis were not yet on side. He sent Secretary of State Kerry to the region to develop a strategy. Kerry would bring them on side. But was that a strategy? Doubtless the Pentagon provided the White House with plenty of options. All Obama needed to do was decide. He hasn't yet. Hence the apoplexy.
The fallout of all this policy debate was discussed in terms of the upcoming mid-term elections. Mid-terms seldom help a president, and those of an incumbent's sixth year are especially painful because all presidents are lame ducks by then.
The bottom line: Republicans can add a few seats in the House, which they already control, and somewhere between five and eight seats in the Senate where they need six to control that body. So expect even deeper divisions between Congress and the White House, more partisan loyalty, and less willingness to compromise. Expect acrimonious confirmation hearings, Congressional objections to Obama initiatives and presidential vetoes to Congressional ones.
When I got home, my wife asked me: "how's the mood in D.C.?" Among political scientists it was animated. We have lots of stuff to talk about. Among political operatives - and a lot show up at these events - it was gloomy. Nobody likes gridlock, and nobody knows how to move beyond it.
Most of us admire America at its best. Today, it's great to be Canadian.
- Barry Cooper teaches political science at the University of Calgary.
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