Obama's 'Perfect Storm'

By Donald Kirk

The Perfect Storm that inundated the eastern United States this week provided a perfect pre-election boost for President Barack Obama. Republicans, such as New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie, are praising him for having done a great job coming to the rescue of millions.

And Obama’s no longer annoying voters by calling for cuts in funding for FEMA ― the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Just cut defense and other stuff but leave FEMA alone!

Republican candidate Mitt Romney loves to blame Obama for not waving the magic wand needed to turn America around economically over the heads of a Republican Congress in his four years in office, but he’s going to have trouble accusing Obama of messing up on the Perfect Storm.

Or, to put it another way, Romney would love to see Obama mess things up in time to look bad by election day next Tuesday. You may be sure Obama’s managers see the response to the Perfect Storm as the climactic phase of his campaign. Forget about speeches and handshakes ― or rather, wrap all the campaigning into visits to disaster sites.

Too bad for Romney that’s the president’s job. All Romney can do is pray for a presidential screw-up. Where’s Vice President Biden when the Republicans need him? Surely he can be counted on to say something stupid.

All of which leads to another point that might make these observations relevant to readers out here. The U.S. presidential campaign is all about U.S. domestic issues.

Foremost, it’s been the economy, rising prices, unemployment and all that. For months we’ve been hearing that the Republicans are the party of the super-rich and the Democrats the voice of the middle class and growing ranks of the poor and jobless.

Those issues are indeed very important considering the trouble Obama’s been having undoing the tax cuts that his predecessor, George W. Bush, rammed through on the advice of the wealthy crybabies who were his closest friends and advisers.

Their dedication to undoing programs in place since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed the New Deal at the height of the first Great Depression ― the one that began in 1929 during the reign of another Republican president, Herbert Hoover ― has to be the most important problem facing voters as America recovers falteringly from its second greatest depression.

But hang on, what happened to foreign policy? We got an once-over on the Middle East during the last presidential debate, which came down to two memorable issues.

The first is what to do about Iran’s nuclear program, and the second is how to combat China’s yawning trade surplus with the U.S. Obama and Romney seemed to be competing with each other to show their support of Israel, and Romney tried, not well, to make Obama look weak on China. That wasn’t easy, of course, considering all the money Romney’s firm invests in China and in companies that export U.S. jobs to China.

But what happened to Korea? The word came up once when Romney remarked, “You see North Korea continuing to export their nuclear technology.” That was part of a riff on American “influence receding” world-wide during Obama’s presidency with emphasis on Iran, presumably the recipient of some of that technology.

Nowhere else did either of them touch again on Korea or anything else to do with Asia other than the Chinese trade surplus. There’s no telling what Romney would do if push comes to shove between South and North Korea, between Japan and China or between China and the Southeast Asian countries on the South China Sea, including Vietnam, the recipient of massive Chinese military aid shipped to “North” Vietnam throughout the Vietnam War.

Nor should Romney’s lone reference to North Korea’s nuclear program be seen as a threat to bomb North Korea’s nuclear complex at Yongbyon. From all Romney has said about Asia, which aside from China is virtually nothing, you’ve got to wonder if he has a clue how many U.S. troops are here or what they face at such flashpoints as the demilitarized zone or the Yellow Sea or the Senkaku Islands. (Forget Dokdo ― Japan and Korea aren’t coming to blows there as long as the U.S. has separate alliances with each of them.)

The best guess, though, is Romney would continue the policy of Obama & Company, look for “dialogue” and wring his hands along with every other world leader when North Korea again did something nasty like conduct another underground nuclear test or fire a long-range missile.

Whatever happens at the polls in the U.S. next Tuesday, the winner faces the prospect of having to deal with headline-grabbing issues in this hemisphere that may come as a surprise to American voters.

Romney’s idea of getting real tough on China about its currency has explosive implications. U.S. aircraft carriers have been leading flotillas around the South China Sea and the East China Sea, dropping more than a casual hint of U.S. power in the region. The Chinese for their part have been improving their weaponry and recently got a carrier ― an old Soviet tub, refitted for training.

Too bad Obama and Romney didn’t get around to such dangers. Or maybe they realized as long as no war is going on viewers might have gotten bored. And anyway, during their foreign policy debate, weren’t the San Francisco Giants defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the last game of the National League Championship Series? Surely that was a lot more interesting.

Columnist Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, watched all three debates on CNN but would have opted for the NLCS game if he could have gotten it on his cable TV. He’s reachable at kirkdon@yahoo.com.