Lessons From Obama’s Re-election

Barack Hussein Obama, 51, was the cynosure of all eyes on Tuesday. He was returned to the White House after scoring a slim victory over his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, to continue the governance of a deeply divided country.

His new four-year term retains a partisan-rich capital, where Republicans retained their majority in the House and Democrats kept their control of the Senate. His re-election offers him a second chance that will quickly be tested, given the rapidly escalating fiscal slowdown.

But there is a lot to learn from the hard-pounding campaign and a nail-biting contest. Obama’s victory wasn’t big. It wasn’t pretty. It certainly wasn’t inspirational in the way that his win in 2008 was. But it was a win all the same. In places it was wafer-thin. But it was a US presidential win all the same.

In difficult times such as this where the nation is jolted by Hurricane Sandy, it is, arguably, a greater political achievement than his first presidential victory. Obama’s re-election has extended his place in history: carrying the tenure of the nation’s first black president into a second term.

There is no better way to gauge the pulse of the nation than in the swinging patterns of polls. Issues rather than primordial tendencies celebrate the genius of political gladiators, their campaign teams and voters’ conduct. Strategies were tailor-made to assuage and persuade and the national interest seems to be the most defining element among the combatants and their followers. Americans cast off the temporary setback of Hurricane Sandy for the real American challenge.

The American media provided a great torchlight for developing democracies with their apt, dispassionate and empirical analyses of issues and events. For instance, as the path to victory for Romney narrowed as the night wore along, with Obama winning at least 303 electoral votes.

And even before the official announcement, the television networks began projecting him as the winner at 11:20pm; his arch-rival Mitt Romney of the Republican Party, for more than 90 minutes after the projections, held off calling him to concede. And as Obama waited to declare victory in Chicago, Romney’s aides were prepared to head to the airport, suitcases packed, potentially to contest several close results.

But as it became increasingly clear that no amount of contesting would bring him victory, Romney called Obama to concede shortly before 1am. “I wish all of them well, but particularly the president, the first lady and their daughters…This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation,” he said.

While these attitudes accentuate America’s primal position as the bastion of democracy, they serve as a reminder to pretender-nations like ours to brace up for the sportsman-like feature of this great political game. Another lesson is that no state, tribe or group is immured to change.

That Romney won North Carolina and Indiana which Obama carried four years ago, while Obama was victorious in Michigan, the state where Romney was born, and Minnesota, a pair of states that Republican groups had spent millions trying to make competitive, is instructive in this regard.

The biggest lesson is that Obama’s re-election victory was not a sign that a fractured nation had finally come together. It was a strong endorsement of economic policies that stress job growth, health care reform, tax increases and balanced deficit reduction.

No one expects a post-election letup in the courtroom fights over state efforts to restrict women’s access to safe and legal abortions. America is what matters.