Both Labour and the Tories can learn from Barack Obama’s re-election
Barack Obama’s re-election last month was a remarkable feat. He joins Bill Clinton as only the second Democrat president since Franklin Roosevelt to win a second term. And he won that second term against an economic backdrop more akin to that which faced Roosevelt than Clinton.
His coalition may be a touch narrower than it was in 2008, but the president has confounded those who believed it was a one-off. Instead, it is apparent that the new Democratic majority predicted by some pollsters for nearly a decade may be coming to fruition.
For both Labour and the Conservatives there are, of course, lessons that can be learned from the result. David Cameron will comfort himself that, even when presiding over a sluggish economy, Obama bucked the trend which has seen most incumbent governments lose their bids for re-election. Moreover, the prime minister can soothe nervous Tory backbenchers with the message that, just as the president could recover from ‘midterm blues’, so can they.
Ed Miliband, on the other hand, can point to the victory of a centre-left soulmate whose approach to economic policy more closely mirrors his own. And while the prime minister may see grounds for hope in the fact that voters appear to have accepted Obama’s belief that it will take ‘more than a few years’ to escape the United States’ economic plight, the president’s emphasis on the long-term stagnation of wages and living standards facing America’s ‘squeezed middle’ is much more familiar terrain for the Labour leader.
There are, however, some other lessons which should give both Cameron and Miliband pause for thought. The first concerns the limits of negative campaigning. The prime minister will no doubt note with interest that, faced with a difficult economic record to defend, the Democrats went early and heavy in their attempts to paint a decidedly unflattering portrait of Mitt Romney’s record and character. While the final result may appear to justify the electoral utility of such a strategy, it is not without dangers. Tim Montgomerie, editor of ConservativeHome, for instance, warned of ‘the danger of demonising your opponent and that opponent then confounding the caricature in the election debates’.
At the same time, Romney’s attempt to make the election a referendum on Obama’s economic performance – rather than a choice between two competing alternatives – should be a warning for Labour. ‘One more heave’, assuming that any concrete commitments are simply a hostage to fortune, and that relentless attacks on the Tories are plausible routes back to power, have been dealt a fatal blow.
The second concerns the importance of the centre-ground. While Romney managed to narrow the race in its final month by donning the mantle of ‘Moderate Mitt’, his pandering to the Republicans’ conservative base during the primary season was not easily forgotten and ultimately cost him dear.
Romney’s defeat should thus be particularly instructive for those Tories urging a return to a more ‘traditional’ Conservative approach. But it is the party’s failure to modernise and reach out beyond its core supporters which is at the root of the Tories’ problems. And, while the analogies are not perfect, Conservatives who advocate a return to the ‘blue-collar populism’ of the Thatcher years are likely to be as disappointed as those Republicans who believed that Romney could eschew newly emerging demographic groups and simply court white working-class ‘Reagan Democrats’ in midwestern states.
The centre-ground lesson should be cautionary for Labour, too. Obama’s successful mobilisation of the core Democrat constituencies – urban liberals, the young, and minorities – ultimately prevailed only because the president was also able to keep on board enough of the suburbanites who Clinton detached from their Republican moorings in the 1990s. Tellingly, the president won 57 per cent to 41 per cent among self-described moderates.
Clinton’s prominent role in the campaign was an interesting one. Like Obama wishes to, Clinton raised taxes on the very rich to cut the deficit in the 1990s. But the former president’s reputation for fiscal responsibility, credibility with the business community, and continuing appeal to white working-class voters, proved a valuable shield against Republican attacks which Obama had, perhaps, done too little to insulate himself from. Critically, Clinton was able to expose the ‘voodoo economics’ which underlay Romney’s pledge to cut taxes and increase defence spending all while apparently balancing the budget.
While the British and American political cycles are only imperfectly aligned, Britain’s postwar consensus found an echo in the moderate Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s; the New Right’s rise in the late 1970s was mirrored on both sides of the Atlantic and presaged the election victories of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s; and the New Democrat politics of Clinton helped shape the rise of New Labour in the 1990s. The Conservatives have reason to be relieved that Obama has won. But it is to Labour’s values and politics that the president is far closer. If it takes the right lessons from his victory, the party will be a step closer to putting those cycles back in sync.
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