Information: De politiska tungviktarna i Ukraina!

UKRAINA | Förutom president Viktor Janukovitj, demonstranterna och oligarkerna finns det en rad politiker som tillhör dramats huvudpersoner.

Tempus, som översätter nyhetsartiklar från bl.a. The Washington Post, har tittat på situationen i landet.

De viktigaste är för närvarande Jurij Lutsenko, Arsenij Jatsenjuk, tidigare världsmästaren i boxning Vitalij Klytjko och den fängslade Julia Tymosjenko.  

Will Englund och Kathy Lally skriver:

Yuri Lutsenko, 48

A reformer who helped lead the Orange Revolution of 2004, he was interior minister in the previous government and was then prosecuted for embezzlement and abuse of office as soon as Yanukovych, the loser in 2004, won the presidency in 2010. His case was one of those that brought sharp criticism of Ukraine’s “selective justice” from leaders in the E.U. and the United States. He served a little more than two years in prison before Yanukovych pardoned him in April of this year.

Acknowledging that millions of Ukrainians were disillusioned by the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, Lutsenko today argues that the time has come to do it right.

Arseny Yatsenyuk, 39

He is the leader of the parliamentary faction of Fatherland Party. This is the party founded by Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister now in prison. Yatsenyuk was at various times minister of economy and foreign minister under Tymoshenko.

Yatsenyuk has always cast himself as a principled reformer, and at times was at odds with Tymoshenko over questions of policy and politics. He ran against her and Yanukovych for president in 2010.

Vitaly Klitschko, 42

The former WBO and WBC heavyweight champion, he had a knockout-to-bout ratio second only to Rocky Marciano’s. Now he’s in politics, and his party is called UDAR, which means “punch.”

Klitschko has no association with the Orange Revolution or the unpopular governments that followed it, but he is a ferocious critic of Yanukovych. As early as September, Klitschko was challenging Yanukovych to resign if he wouldn’t sign the agreement with the E.U.

Yulia Tymoshenko, 54

Currently in a prison hospital, the former prime minister decided Friday to end a hunger strike that she started to protest the failure to sign with the E.U. She was convicted of abuse of office in 2011. The E.U., again citing “selective justice,” has demanded that she be released. Yanukovych can’t bring himself to do it.

Wildly popular when she dramatically became the personification of the Orange Revolution nine years ago, her two stints as prime minister were troubled and complicated. Her supporters are passionate. So are her detractors.

Three former presidents

Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko issued a joint statement sympathizing with the protests and warning that the government is losing control of the situation. But none of them commands a significant following among the public.

Tidskriftsomslag: Tempus, nr 50, den 13-19 december 2013.

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Politik: Washington och Barack Obamas vallöften!

USA | Förväntningarna är stora att Barack Obama skall leverera efter sin övertygande valseger. Frågan är bara vad det är han skall leverera.  

Vare sig Obama eller Mitt Romney utmärkte sig inte för att vara överdrivet tydliga med vad man tänkte göra vid en eventuell valseger. Alla har därför sin egen bild av vad Obama verkligen lovade.

Det var först under de sista veckorna som Team Obama kände att det var nödvändigt att släppa något som kunde uppfattas som vallöften – “The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security”.

Men även detta dokument innehöll mer av vaga löften än specifika åtgärder.

Det är inte ovanligt att kombattanterna i en valrörelse inte vill öppna upp sig för attacker genom att vara allt för tydliga.

Det är alltid lättare att försvara visioner än tydliga vallöften. Vallöften drabbar nämligen alltid någon väljargrupp negativt. Och vem vill göra väljare upprörda?

Thomas Frank, contributing editor på Harper’s Magazine, tycker sig ana att Obamas väljare kommer att bli besvikna.

As it happens, there is another Obama campaign document that tells us far more about his second-term intentions. I am referring to the now-legendary interview the president gave to the Des Moines Register two weeks before Election Day. At first, Obama campaign officials had insisted that the interview be off-the-record, and only later did they agree to its publication. The president, perhaps assuming that his remarks would remain private, was unusually candid — and what he promised was anything but four years of nationalized banks and sharia law.

Perhaps it will surprise you to learn that his real policy ambition was the same as always: to achieve the Grand Bargain. Which is to say, a fiscal deal between the parties that would enact the centrist dream agenda all at once by cutting spending, increasing tax revenue, and (in at least one version of it) “reforming” entitlements.

[…]

Another term for the Grand Bargain might be “austerity” — the punitive economic reflex that has driven much of Europe into deep recession. Austerity proceeds from the reasonable-sounding premise that government must cut back spending during hard times, just as everyone else does. However, this practice actually serves to worsen slumps and recessions rather than cure them. That in turn reduces tax revenues, thereby pumping up deficits and making the need for further austerity seem even more urgent. Such a bargain might be grand, but it might also be stupid and self-destructive. Why does the president crave it so?

When the Obama Administration was young and orthodoxy was on the ropes, the president was a dogged foe of austerity: he secured the passage of a large stimulus package, which ballooned the federal deficit even as it cushioned the blow of the recession. And he didn’t wait to enact some sweeping Treaty of Dupont Circle, either. He passed the stimulus over the noisy and nearly unanimous objections of the Republicans and simultaneously flew in the face of the city’s traditional predilections.

 […]

Barack Obama’s Democrats just won a resounding triumph in what was advertised as the great ideological face-off of our times. What we the people chose, according to this viewpoint, was social insurance, universal health care, a strong regulatory state. What this town urges on President Obama, unfortunately, is something quite different: an imaginary armistice between the two parties, purchased at the cost of the very things his supporters think they just voted for. It is a recipe for greatness credible to the soi-disant “informed,” maybe. But to nearly everyone else, it rings with the hollow and obsolete magical thinking of Washington, D.C.

Bild: Både artikeln och tidskriftsomslaget är från Harper’s Magazine, januari 2013.

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Kampanj: Obama riskerar falla på eget grepp!

USA | The Economist konstaterar att Barack Obamas ”record is better than the woes of America’s economy suggests”.

Trots detta har Obama satsat hårt på en negativt präglad kampanj riktad mot Mitt Romney.

Men en sådan strategi kan lätt slå tillbaka på presidenten. I en ledare skriver The Economist:

Were he facing a more charismatic candidate than Mitt Romney or a less extremist bunch than the Republicans, Mr Obama would already be staring at defeat. The fact that the president has had to “go negative” so early and so relentlessly shows how badly he needs the election to be about Mr Romney’s weaknesses rather than his own achievements.

[…]

Mr Obama must offer more than this, for three reasons. First, a negative campaign may well fail. The Republicans are a rum bunch with a wooden leader; but Mr Romney’s record as an executive and governor is impressive, and his running-mate, Paul Ryan, is a fount of bold ideas. Mr Obama’s strategy of blaming everything on Republican obstructionism will strike many voters as demeaning.

Second, even if negative campaigning works, a re-elected Mr Obama will need the strength that comes from a convincing agenda. Otherwise the Republicans, who will control the House and possibly the Senate too, will make mincemeat of him. And, third, it is not just Mr Obama who needs a plan. America does too. Its finances and its government require a drastic overhaul.

Läs mer: “Barack Obama’s economic record: End-of-term report”.

Bild: Tidskriftsomslaget är The Economist den 1 september-7 september 2012. 

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Krishantering: Obamas misslyckade presidentperiod!

USA | Det finns idag ett brett missnöje även bland Barack Obamas mest devota anhängare över vad presidenten lyckats åstadkomma.

Detta skriver man i en utmärkt längre essay i tidskriften Der Spiegel.

Frågan är då om Mitt Romney skulle bli en bättre president? Författarnas svar är ”definitivt inte”.

(Den tyska texten finns inte tillgänglig direkt på hemsidan men däremot en engelsk översättning.)

Ullrich Fichtner, Marc Hujer och Gregor Peter Schmitz skriver i Der Spiegel:

To fairly judge his presidency, one has to go through the list of his kept and broken promises. Based on that criterion, Obama’s performance falls within the ”above-average” category when compared to the 11 US presidents since World War II. It is a modest success, the kind that many politicians would welcome. But it cannot seriously be enough for Obama.

As irrational and naïve as it always was to hail him as a savior, and as unfair as it is to compare his actions with his charisma, he portrayed himself as the shining knight of change. The word appeared prominently in his campaign and his slogan ”Yes we can!” circled the globe. But now the prevailing feeling in America, even among the president’s supporters, is that Obama has failed to deliver in many respects.

[…]

Proposed legislation that would normally be uncontroversial has been blocked for years, while senior positions in the judiciary and in government agencies have remained unfilled. Necessary supplementary budgets are only being approved at the last minute, and only because not approving them could result in a national bankruptcy.

In this climate, no president stands a chance of shaping the world according to his platform. In 2011, Obama is dealing with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives that refuses to budge even a single millimeter. The civil, democratic concept of compromise has been ruined, the concept has become a taboo for Republicans. The Republicans have become so stubborn that they are even blocking bills identical to legislation they proposed in the past.

As a result Washington, already long disparaged as an aloof, out-of-touch capital, has become an object of hate for many citizens, and the epitome of mediocrity and incompetence.

[…]

But what is the campaign really about? A review of Obama’s domestic policy performance in the first years of his presidency yields a list of clear successes, which he now rattles off at every campaign event. They include his $787 million economic stimulus package, which prevented the economy from collapsing after the 2008 financial crisis, and the government bailouts of the American auto industry, which helped turn things around in Detroit. Obama claims credit for fighting for the rights of gays and lesbians, and he hopes to be remembered as the president who launched the biggest healthcare reform in the nation’s history, which helped provide 32 million people with health insurance.

Each of these achievements is impressive in its own right, but the list of Obama’s domestic successes pretty much stops there, and it doesn’t coalesce into a sizeable, comprehensible agenda of ”Change.” He has also had some serious failures. Last summer, for example, Obama took his biggest beating yet in his bid to achieve national reconciliation when he failed to force the Republicans to compromise on a long-term budget, even though the government was on the verge of bankruptcy.

[…]

Does it need a new president? The question is certainly justified. What has Obama done to address his large country’s many serious problems? Not enough. Could he have done more, not just at home but in the rest of the world? Probably. Have the Republicans starved him? Undoubtedly. But would their candidate Mitt Romney, the mysterious, filthy rich Mormon, be the better president? Most certainly not.

Bild: Tidskriftsomslaget ovan är daterat den 11 juni 2012.

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Historia: ”It was all splendidly ludicrous”!

ALLA VALKAMPANJER har sin beskärda del av professionella politiska konsulter. Men dessa rådgivare har inte alltid haft den stjärnstatus som de har idag.

Craig Shirley beskriver bl.a. i sin bok Rendezvous With Destiny hur det hela tog sin början, men också hur vardagen ser ut för de allra flesta i en presidentvalskampanj.

Political-operatives-as-celebrities were a new phenomenon in politics. It had taken off in 1976, starting with the media’s love affair with [Jimmy] Carter’s aides and certified characters Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell. The two made the cover of Rolling Stone. Behind the scenes were hundreds more, however, who toiled in anonymity for their candidates, including the personal assistants. (s. 174-175)

[…]

Staffers were expected to work 24/7, and most ailments to be handled by taking two aspirin. Going to emergency room or staying home sick were options of last resort. You had better know, as pro athletes did, the difference between pain and injury. What couldn’t be fixed with something out of the campaign’s medicine cabinet – or coffee, alcohol, or tobacco – would have to wait until after the election.

Arriving at the campaign office late, say after 7 A.M., or leaving early, say before 10 P.M., was not only frowned upon, it could get you fired. There were people who would give their eyeteeth to work on a presidential campaign for little money. Both campaigns had filing cabinets bulging with résumés of eager, passionate, young supplicants willing to be treated like dirt as long as they got a start in politics.

If you were on the road, tardiness meant the plane or motorcade would simply leave you behind. You’d have to catch up on your own, then sheepishly explain how you had screwed up. Toward the end of the campaign, clean underwear became an option for young men. Some simply and repeatedly turned theirs inside out. It was all splendidly ludicrous. (s. 455)

Övrigt: Tidskriftsomslaget ovan är Rolling Stone den 19 maj 1977. På deras hemsida kan man se trettioåtta av tidskriftens omslag med politiska teman. 

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