While the issues that may determine the next occupier of the White House are known, issues that may not prove much of a decider are beginning to emerge, if remarks of outgoing President Barack Obama, during his state of the union account delivered on Wednesday, is any yardstick.
During the address at the congressional hall, his seventh and last, President Obama was unequivocal about what he called campaign rhetoric aimed at ridiculing Americans and friends of America. Taking implied shots at rivals in the Republican party, particularly presidential front-runner Donald Trump, as well as, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Obama said America’s destiny is under attack by a political system festering in malice, gridlock and in the grip of the rich and the powerful. The Republican frontrunners, on Friday, replied the President word-for-word.
With the Iowa caucuses around the corner, precisely in February, the race to the oval office has been dominated by issues bordering on American Foreign Affairs, Economic Stability, Taxes, Immigration and Education.
Other issues central in the race include Same-sex Marriage, Gun Control, Health Care, Environment and Climate Change.
With former President Bill Clinton set to combine forces with incumbent President Barack Obama in support of Mrs. Hilary Clinton, the US former secretary of state is favoured to pick the Democrats’ ticket.
The parties’ delegates will officially pick the presidential and the vice presidential candidates in July. Specifically, Democratic National Convention would be held between July 25 – 28 in Philadelphia, while the Republican National Convention comes up from July 18 – 21 in the state of Ohio. The presidential election comes up on November 8, 2016.
Acknowledging that a torrent of change, technological advances and economic dislocation has left many Americans fearful of the future and anxious as social structures that have underpinned the life of the nation for decades fray, Obama urged them not to fall prey to the periodic temptation that has emerged throughout history to alienate minorities and resist social change.
“Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more and more people. And because we did –– because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril –– we emerged stronger and better than before,” he said.
Economic opportunity, security and a sustainable, peaceful planet are possible, he said, if the country could return to “rational, constructive debates. It will only happen if we fix our politics,” he said.
America’s first president of African descent dismissed the kind of politics that alienates people rather than unites them. At times, Obama was almost pleading with his audience to embrace the vision of hope and change that swept him to power and then was sullied by the bitter realities of polarised politics over a darker vision of America’s character.
Pleading, Obama said, “As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” in a remark aimed at Mr. Trump’s anti-Muslim campaign.
“We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world,” the President said.
In the Republican response, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, after criticizing Obama on other policies, also offered a repudiation of Trump, decrying it as a “siren call of the angriest voices.”
But not done, Obama insisted: “I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air. Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close.”
Gradually, the debate has shifted from the core issues to those of values. Values that recognise the place of the United States in global scheme of things beyond hysterias informed by occasional setbacks and challenges.
“As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands,” Obama said. “They do not threaten our national existence. That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit,” he said, warning against pushing away vital American’s allies in the Middle East by “echoing the lie” that the group represents Islam.
“We just need to call them what they are –– killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed,” he said, warning that “tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians” may work as a sound bite, but don’t pass muster on the world stage. Obama’s comments may have been aimed at Mr. Ted Cruz, who has warned he would carpet bomb ISIL if elected into White House and Rubio, who says America is waging an existential fight against radical Islamic terrorism.
Also, it is unlikely that the birthplace, Canada, would pose any serious threat to Cruz’s presidential ambition. Born to an American mother and Cuban father in Canada, Cruz has been American since birth as provided by the American Constitution. Though, the correct interpretation of the clause has never been tested at the US Supreme Court, only Trump seems to have been upbeat about Cruz’s nationality.
On Friday during the Republican debate for White House hopefuls, Trump told his rival: “There’s a big question mark over your head.”
