
Yes, a savvy, intelligently planned campaign helped President Obama. His team realised the potential in honing in on non-white Americans, notably the rapidly growing Hispanic population, on women and on the young. The voting patterns, in fact, showed a deeply divided country, split by age, by belief, by race and by gender. Mitt Romney’s views on women, on reproduction, on contraception, on immigration and a host of other issues appeared to be rooted somewhere in the 1950s. His membership of the Mormon community, a deeply orthodox Christian sub-sect, may have shaped this. But the fact that similar views came from other Republicans spotlights a country within which views differ sharply. Republican Party insiders are already discussing the need for change as younger voters grow in number, women assert greater power and Latino numbers grow. All these groups identified in greater numbers with President Obama.
As far as foreign policy goes, Romney’s views on Afghanistan and Pakistan did not differ much from President Obama’s. His views on tackling ‘Islam’ in some ways were harsher. We have lost little on that front then. What we can gain from the US polling process is the calm and precision with which it was conducted and also the graciousness of the speeches of both candidates as the final results were called. As always, President Obama spoke powerfully and eloquently. We must hope that as a more experienced leader now, he can do more to unite a nation split along many lines and turn his vision for the future of his country into reality.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2012.
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