Our nation after the midterm elections

The result of last week’s midterm elections marked what some have dubbed a sea change in the American political landscape. Significant Republican victories in both the House and the Senate only two years after Barack Obama’s inauguration are a sign of just how much has changed. What started out as a fringe movement frequently derided as absurd has proven that it has the influence and staying power to remain a serious political institution in this country.

The White House must now brace itself for what is likely to turn into a war of attrition against the new Republican Senators and Representatives, many of whom have pledged to repeal significant portions of Obama’s health care and financial reform regulation.

Now that portions of the health care reform bill have already been implemented, for instance allowing people to remain covered by their parents’ health care provider until the age of 26, Republicans might have been wary of pushing too quickly to take away benefits people are only just beginning to enjoy. The presence of and, indeed, the increasing† influence of the Tea Party on the Republican party has pushed those who were once moderate further and further to the right. A Guardian article published the day after the elections cited John Boehner, the new Speaker of The House, pledging to never let the Tea Party down.

Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin proclaimed that the voting public had made its voice heard, elaborating that the Tea Party would “send [their] representatives to D.C. to stop your fundamental transformation of America. Enough is enough.”

As successful as the midterms have been, there remain a lot of lessons for the burgeoning Tea Party to learn. The Tea Party has appeared reluctant, if not downright unwilling, to denounce its more controversial candidates. Some Republican fears were realized when it became apparent that concerns over the Tea Party’s extremism appear to have cost it several elections.

Commentators have already stated that it’s time for the Tea Party to reign in its fringe elements. The defeats of Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell and New York’s Carl Paladino may serve as a humbling reminder that while America is ready for a change in the way its politics are conducted, it is far from ready to embrace just anyone.

As it transitions into power, the Tea Party will have to learn to channel the energy that carried it into office into a coherent policy agenda. There is reason to believe that this will be an incredibly difficult feat, given that this very energy neither had a clear mandate nor exhibited willingness to compromise.

For many, the Tea Party has been a blank canvas on which they have been able to project their frustration. The relatively young Tea Party has had its first taste of power and given the lack of a clear policy agenda, it is difficult to predict exactly what the next two years will look like.

The Republican’s sweeping victories also underscore a larger and more troubling shift in American politics regarding Obama. Long gone is the euphoria of election night 2008, where at Wooster alone, roving groups of students ran across campus yelling his name.

Indeed in many areas, the midterms turned into a referendum on Obama’s presidency. Recent interviews by the Guardian, Real Clear Politics and The Economist show that more and more Americans feel Obama has been ineffective at reigning in the financial crisis or addressing health care reform. In the wake of the Democrats’ devastating defeats, perhaps it is time to more seriously reflect on the first two years of Obama’s administration, a subject on which there is no lack of speculation and opinion.

In an editorial for The New York Times appropriately entitled “How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost The Midterms,” correspondent Timothy Egan writes “the three signature accomplishments of his first two years ó a health care law that will make life easier for millions of people, financial reform that attempts to level the playing field with Wall Street and the $814 billion stimulus package ó have all been recast as big government blunders, rejected by the emerging majority.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus package so often vilified by moderate and extremist Republicans alike, has saved roughly three million jobs.† Additionally, a majority of taxpayers received a one-time cut, a fact eloquently and succinctly explained in a New York Times article by Michael Cooper in October.

After weeks of voicing concerns over the administration’s handling of General Motors (GM), The Economist issued an apology to the president, stating that although it is possible that GM would have restructured under normal bankruptcy laws, it is “more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended.”

A recent Pew poll revealed that nearly half of American voters believed that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was passed during Obama’s administration when in reality, it was passed under the Bush administration.† TARP, which came to be known more commonly as the bank bailout bill, is the bill that authorized the U.S. government to purchase assets from financial institutes like banks in order to strengthen the financial sector.

Perhaps it is simply the case that it is harder to get credit for preventing things from going bad.† Perhaps the voting public would have been happier to hear that they were receiving money back from the government rather than that systemic reform was being enacted to prevent exactly the type of crisis that has lead to all this anger and frustration in the first place.† If one has a difficult time appreciating the scope of such an achievement, he has only to look back two years ago to remember why such reform was necessary.

It’s understandable that the average American feels frustrated at the state of the economy and the difficulty of finding work.† The financial crisis from which the world is only just emerging has often been compared to the Great Depression in terms of scope and damage.† It seems puzzling to me then that voters can turn around and demand that the economy be fixed and job growth restored in simply two years.

Maybe it’s easier to fault Obama with not being clearer about his policy achievements.† But the fact of the matter is in many cases, people’s unwillingness to investigate the issues for themselves has made them easy targets for groups like the Tea Party.

For more information on the Obama administration’s specific legislation and achievements, NPR offers free access to the Obama Tracker.