Friday, July 29, 2016

"as one having authority" - US Presidential Status since 1992 to 2016



Around the Imperial Palace, Tokyo


US Presidential Status since 1992 to 2016


In the 1992 US Presidential election, Bill Clinton won in a revolutionary manner.

The then incumbent President W.H. Bush could not leverage his advantageous position as the winner of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and also as the key contributor to the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Bush had been a Congress man and CIA director before he became Vice President in the Reagan presidency.  Then he was elected as President in 1988.  W.H. Bush was expected to easily win the 1992 Presidential election, but he lost to young and rising Bill Clinton riding on the tide of the new technology boom.

Bill Clinton was easily reelected in 1996 more riding on the tide of the Internet boom.  And, Al Gore, the Vice President in Clinton's presidency, was expected to win the 2000 Presidential election as the reasonable successor of Bill Clinton.  However, President Bill Clinton committed adultery in the White House, which alienated some Christian voters from Democratic Presidential candidate Al Gore.  As a result, more outwardly-Christian W. Bush won the 2000 Presidential election, though it was an extremely close race.

W. Bush was not suitable for the US presidency.  He looked friendly to Americans, but looked like disliking serious jobs that required excellent intellectual ability.  Without the 2001 9/11 Terror Attack on New York and Washington D.C., W. Bush should not have been reelected in 2004.

His human network in the US political establishment worked favorably for him as the Commander in Chief in the War on Terror, though he could not capture or destroy Osama bin Laden, the leader of AlQaeda that carried out the 9/11 Terror.  However, toward the end of his second term, popularity of President Bush and the Republican Party declined drastically partly due to dubious backgrounds against the invasion of Iraq and more partly due to corporate scandals such as the Enron case and criminal subprime-loan schemes.

The 2008 Presidential election was fought in the middle of the progress of the 2008 Financial Crisis.  This Wall Street-triggered crisis exposed the extreme greed and dangerous avarice of rich and super-rich Americans who supported President W. Bush, a son of W.H. Bush.  Consequently, even GM faced a crisis of bankruptcy and the US unemployment rate rose to 10% or so.  Many lower-middle-class Americans lost jobs, and some of them became homeless.  Even white voters who usually didn't vote for a Democratic candidate accepted the African-American Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In this way, the first African American President was realized in the US in a very drastic and revolutionary manner than in the case of Bill Clinton in 1992.

During Obama's presidency, the US economy has almost fully recovered to the level before the 2008 Lehman Shock or Financial Crisis, and the US could avoid further Islamic terror on its main land while a US special military unit killed Osama bin Laden hiding in Pakistan.

However in the second term of Obama's presidency, the global economy came into another uncertain phase with slowdown of Chinese economy, which had been expanding in past decades owing to various aid and support from the US and Japan, and the unstable conditions of the EU symbolized by the Greek Crisis and UK's decision to leave the EU; and the global security was not ever improved with the ominous rise of ISIS, aggressive policies of Russia led by President Putin and China led by President Xi, and the explosive increase of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to Western Europe.  But, Americans came to have an inward-looking mind set.

It is partly due to President Obama's attitudes in the global diplomacy, since he carefully avoided to take the initiative in controlling the world beyond relatively decreasing capability of the US economy and military.  It can be understood that Obama took such soft policies to global affairs because the War on Terror having been launched by W. Bush did not result in peaceful conditions of the world.  Obama mainly concentrated on the treaty with Iran, the nuclear disarmament, and the normalization of the diplomatic relation with Cuba.  However, his stance did not satisfy some American voters who did not like to see the relative decline of American influences in the world.  This sentiment helped Donald Trump become the Republican Presidential candidate for the 2016 election.

American voters tend to push for a drastic change after a period in stable or obsolete conditions, if they sense that the US might be getting left behind the global trend or something new is really needed to change a domestic trend they are tired of.

In this context, American voters want a very different type of the president after Barack Obama.  And, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both unique enough: possibly the first female US President or the first US President from the entertainment/real estate business without roots in conventional politics.

As for composition of American voters, roughly speaking, white voters still account for 70% while blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and other minorities account for 30%.  Almost all the latter are expected to vote for the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.  It means if she should get 30% of white voters, or 21 percent points from 70 percent points of them, Hillary would be elected as US President.  It does not look so difficult.  Rather, if she should be rejected by more than 30% of white voters, including die-hard supporters of Bernie Sanders, it will be a huge surprise.

But, the result of the 2016 US Presidential election must be already known to God who could also interfere with the outcome of the coming ballot.

Personally, I think that God has allowed advancement of Donald Trump in the 2016 race to suppress the Bush family that represents conventional political esstablishment.  But beyond this effect, it is doubtful that Trump can enjoy more success in the politics whose scope is wider than experiences of Trump in his past business that is exclusively centered around his own personal profits but not public interests. .




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Mat 7:28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
Mat 7:29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.