Obama’s Shay Party Problem

[This will be posted to my Islamic issues blog, The Middle Everything, tomorrow morning.]

American politicians have become accustomed to thinking that maintenance of status quo will bring stability to their domestic and foreign policy objectives, but two phenomenons that have occurred since 2008 should shatter this belief. (I say “should” with the implication that it won’t, because if there’s another beast on this planet more stubborn than an American politician, I’d like to know what it is.)

The Republican party is currently suffering an identity crisis — the Tea Party phenomenon.

Here’s what happened: For decades Republican politicians would push support for conservative issues to their base, but then never act towards resolving these issues. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll focus on abortion. Republican politicians said abortion is evil and we must outlaw it, and that’s been their stance since the US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973 — but for decades, abortion stayed legal in America. It’s still legal despite the fact that, during the majority of President George W. Bush’s term, the Republicans controlled the Executive and Legislative branches of federal government. With a conservative leaning Supreme Court, many conservative voters that Republican politicians considered their natural base of voters itched for action — they wanted abortion overturned. They wanted abortion made illegal now.

Republican politicians balked, though. Without issues like abortion to froth up anger in their base of voters, what else could they use to create voter anger to channel to the voting booth and vote Republican? The Republican Party was stuck in a quandary of having all the power — but taking ultimate action on their issues was a risk to that power.

Eventually, a new crop of politicians like Sarah Palin arose to take care of this problem for the Republicans. Sarah Palin is basically a 100% representation of the kind of conservative voter Republicans have pandered to, but she doesn’t take no for an answer. She doesn’t care about the details, she just wants what the Republicans have promised her for years.

Sarah Palin is the essence of the conservative voter base Republicans used for years to prop themselves into power, tending it by playing to their emotions, telling them “Vote for us and we’ll make abortion illegal!”; among other promises. Now Republicans must battle with the insatiable base they created. The Republicans thought holding a carrot on a stick in front of their voter base would create stability, but instead it created an earthquake.

How does this relate to foreign policy, especially for Islamic nations that I primarily write about now? For some reason, the Republican Party’s troubles with the Tea Party are the first thing I thought of when pondering Obama’s reactions to the ongoing Egyptian Revolution.

It would be dishonest not to mention that Obama is a victim of decades of Middle East and North African (MENA) foreign policy objectives laid before him by previous presidents; and the primary concern of American foreign policy for the often volatile MENA region is maintaining stability so we continue to have access to oil and the Suez Canal. But America is also supposed to be a beacon of democracy to the rest of the world, so I’ve been wholly unsatisfied with Obama’s refusal to tell Egyptian Dictator Mubarak to listen to his people and resign from office.

After Mubarak used his 2/1/2011 speech to try telling the world that all the Egyptian people wanted from him was to handpick a new government to put into place, Obama’s follow up speech was equally as out of touch with the demands of the Egyptian people. Obama said Mubarak needs to “manage the aftermath of these protests” — what aftermath? Just because the dictator refuses to step down immediately means the protesters leave the streets? I’ll skip the speculation on just how violent clashes between the government and protesters could become because of Mubarak’s continued arrogance, but it isn’t speculation to say that Obama is out of touch with reality.

Or, rather, Obama’s trying to maintain the reality that MENA dictatorships propped up by American soft (and occasionally hard) power will continue to exist.

I realize that Obama is walking a fine line right now. If he casts off Mubarak’s regime in his public proclamations, that’s an open invitation the the rest of the American-supported dictators that we will not support you if your people revolt — a message that will be heard loud and clear by the people of MENA countries. America’s primary foreign policy objectivity in the MENA region is to maintain stability.

But after decades of American presidents telling the American people — and people around the world — that we support democracy, Obama supporting Mubarak no matter what decision he makes has created problems for him at home and abroad. Obama was elected to office on the mantra of “Hope and Change” — but his Egypt policy has been anything but. Obama’s base of voters clamor for equality at home and abroad, and one must wonder if a representative of the Democrat Party base of voters, equivalent to Sarah Palin on the right, will rise up.

More importantly, though, are the masses on the streets outside of America’s borders. The people who, for years, we claimed we would support in their endeavors to create democratic societies — all while propping up their dictators with billions in American financial aid. Successive American presidents assumed this schizophrenic foreign policy would maintain stability in the MENA region.

Well, they were wrong.

The Republican Party has a Tea Party Problem. The Arabic word for tea is “shayy” — coincidentally, in American history, a citizens revolt happened from 1786-87 called “Shays’ Rebellion”. So I think calling the situation the president finds himself in “Obama’s Shay Party Problem” is appropriate.