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2020-03-27 -

The 2012 presidential race is on. Kinda.

At the moment, it feels more like a wade through treacle - so slow is the pace of President Barack Obama's opponents. Mr Obama can be unambiguous that he is going to run because they are all showing varying degrees of hesitancy.

If the president is to get back into the White House he has to leap a number of obstacles: an economy that is so sluggish that there are constant worries it could go backwards and supporters who may be unenthusiastic about sending more troops to Afghanistan, bombing Libya and failing to close Guantanamo Bay prison. There is also huge uncertainly in the country about health care and much more we will be looking at in detail.

But the strength of opposition doesn't seem, at the moment, a particularly high hurdle.  To British eyes, the primary system is one of the most curious parts of American politics.

The elite of British political parties have only grudgingly and slowly given the power of choosing their own leader. The principle of "one member, one vote" has been slow in coming. 

Elections for leaders rarely grip in the same way as American internal elections. While any American can easily register as a Republican or Democrat and have their say about who represents them, in Britain being a party member still seems an effort of will.

Twenty-five pounds ($40) per year may not be much to play your part in conservative politics in Britain, £12 may be a bargain to have a say in the Lib Dems and it's only a penny (for those under 27) to join the Labour Party - but it still costs something.

There's a feeling that being interested in who becomes your PM or MP isn't enough. You have to be willing to sit in draughty village halls on wet Wednesdays listening.  

The biggest difference is perhaps not in just who is involved, but how late in the political cycle the choice is made. This has a real impact. Every party leader, good or bad, has an image, policy likes and dislikes and personal ticks that colour voters approach to the parties as a whole.

The British public has years to get to know Ed Miliband and decide what to think about him leading a Labour government. Here in the US, the opposition is currently either faceless or hydra-headed. There is no obvious front-runner, and any prediction about who will be the Republican candidate in 2012 is nothing more than an informed guess.

Mr Obama v Michele Bachmann would be quite a different contest to Mr Obama v John Huntsman. 

Republicans get to choose, late in the day, exactly what they want their party to stand for.

The influence of the Tea Party suggests any candidate will be economically conservative, but beyond that, it is impossible to predict very much. The candidates are so unenthusiastic about firing the starting gun, the first big debate at the Reagan library in California has been put back from next month to the autumn.

Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump seem almost certain to have a go. Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, John Huntsman and Mitch Daniels seem less sure bets. And, of course, there are plenty of other names out there.

Mr Obama is starting the race now to make sure that whoever challenges him, his organisation will be ramped up and ready, with big bucks at its command.

Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief. Everyone in my family, that is. We are about to take some holiday, spend some time taking friends round the sights of Washington DC and then visit a national park. Now these attractions will stay open for business.

I am sure many Americans share this sense of relief - that their government has not shut down, and for more serious reasons than mere avoidance of holiday season disappointment.

There's little doubt that it would have made America look rather ridiculous and people would have blamed politicians as a class.

But who are the winners and losers?

The Republican leader, Speaker John Boehner, is a clear winner. Had there been a shutdown, his party would have suffered, and his authority would have been damaged. He negotiated skilfully between the Democrats and his own ardent members and won a deal that many independents will welcome as sensible and necessary.

For the Tea Party movement, too, it is a success. They have made their agenda Washington's agenda. They have stiffened the steel in their leadership's spine to hold our for deeper cuts. But if they complain that this is not enough, or that they've been betrayed, they will look petulant and fall into a Democrat trap - that of looking and sounding like extremists.

The social conservatives, for a time insisting on a rather incoherent anti-abortion policies tacked onto the budget ("fungible money" doesn't make it into a soundbite), risked disaster for their party.

They appeal to a minority in the country and look politically irresponsible - a danger to their party's electability and the purity of the Tea Party's economic and constitutional messages.

The Democrats as a whole don't come off well. They look like realists, but they've given a lot of ground. These cuts will hurt their natural supporters and undermine plans and projects dear to their hearts. The tactics were quite skilful but I can't see the strategy .

President Obama has made the best of a bad job. He has tried to celebrate the agreement as the American virtue of compromise in action. He made himself look like an honest broker, standing for sensible compromise, rather than the deeply involved player that he is. He did a good job of making a shutdown sound really scary, and so pushing the Republicans towards a deal. But once again he looks like a skilful chairman, rather than a leader. The cuts he has had to accept will, I imagine, undermine important parts of his programme.

With bigger battles ahead, over the 2012 budget, the debt ceiling and the deficit, President Obama has yet to explain how he will fund hope and pay for change. By welcoming the deal, as he must, he has embraced a pared-down vision, accepted something smaller and meaner than he offered in 2008.

It was obvious this blow was coming after last year's elections, but it is a serious blow to the presidency nonetheless.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks.

Annapolis, Maryland

"I don't care where he was born. I just wish he would do something abut gas [petrol] prices," a man in Chick and Ruth's diner on the main street of Annapolis in the US state of Maryland told me.

That is the sort of reaction President Barack Obama hopes for. His message is that the fuss about where he was born is bemusing, puzzling, silly and a "sideshow" distracting from the huge economic issues facing America.

But Mr Obama had to kick over the sideshow if the customers at the diner were anything to go by. Most people I spoke had a hazy perception that there was something slightly untrustworthy about the document released by the Obama campaign two and a half years ago. Most thought this had dragged on far too long and deserved to be cleared up.

The argument that Mr Obama isn't eligible to be US president because he wasn't born in the US was once thought to be the preserve of the political fringes, those whose "birther" nickname equates them with the "truthers" who believe 9/11 was carried out by the US government.

But it was plonked centre stage by potential Republican candidate, billionaire property developer and TV star Donald Trump, who has said several times that he doubts Mr Obama was born in Hawaii and that he has put private detectives on the case.

Mr Trump was in New Hampshire today doing multiple stops in this key state. Mr Obama's press conference both stymies his big day and gives him even more publicity. Mr Obama's aim must be to make him look deeply unserious.

Many Obama supporters feel racism motivates the birthers - disbelief that a black man can be an American president. Some birthers are opponents who hate his values so much they think he must be un-American literally as well as metaphorically.

But there's no doubt his team has handled this appallingly.

They have today released the full birth certificate. In 2008 they released a "certification of live birth". The White House communications director writes:

When any citizen born in Hawaii requests their birth certificate, they receive exactly what the president received. In fact, the document posted on the campaign website is what Hawaiians use to get a driver's license from the state and the document recognised by the federal government and the courts for all legal purposes. That's because it is the birth certificate.

That appears to be true, and the Hawaiian authorities were apparently reluctant to publish the full thing. But what could be more delicious to conspiracy theorists than the existence of an unseen document that apparently the authorities were keen to keep from the full public gaze?

In Chick and Ruth's I found a full variety of views about the issue. A waitress said it was crazy that anyone ever doubted when Mr Obama was born, an older man still thought that his president may have been born in Kenyan and wanted to study the document. A younger man had no real doubts but thought this was overdue.

It may not go away. I have already had one e-mail from someone who said he had no interest in were Mr Obama was born but claimed the new document had been doctored.

But one thing is very clear. I was in Annapolis filming a story on the economy, and nearly every customer I spoke to ended up talking, unprompted, about the price of petrol. That was the real issue for them. Like the president, they regarded anything else as a sideshow, albeit an entertaining one.

The president said that on taking office he had told the CIA that the al-Qaeda chief's death or capture was to be the agency's top priority. Senior administration officials say that he chaired five meetings in March working out the plans for this attack. It's really not clear to me if the political leadership makes much difference to operations like this, but it is certainly the impression Mr Obama wants to linger.

The raid took 40 minutes. The intelligence operation took years. It started with the search for a courier, perhaps something of a misnomer for a senior aide to Bin Laden, one of the few men he trusted, according to prisoners who had been interrogated. Four years ago they uncovered his identity. The very high level of precautions the man took made them all the more suspicious. Two years ago they discovered the areas in which he operated. Last summer they identified the compound, in an affluent suburb of Islamabad. Eight times the size of similar homes in the area, it had 18ft-high walls topped with barbed wire and inner walls 7ft high. A large place, worth a million dollars, but with no phone, no internet access. The CIA believes it was purpose-built to hide Bin Laden.

The US didn't tell the Pakistanis about the compound or about the raid until it had happened. That may create some diplomatic friction.

But the mood in America is exultant. As Twitter proclaimed the death of Bin Laden, before the president spoke, crowds gathered outside the White House, waving the stars and stripes and chanting "USA, USA". This is not a country that does quiet satisfaction. This is a cathartic moment for the nation, a moment when America's military might, know how and sheer will power seem to have come together to produce a result.

At a time when there are so many doubts about America's role in the world, and so much economic gloom, there is something clear and plain about celebrating the "rubbing out" of a bad guy, an enemy. The president has been congratulated by even his opponents, and this success allows him to appear grimly resolute in pursuit of America's core interests.

Senior administration officials say Bin Laden's death is not just a symbol, it removes a charismatic and respected leader whom al-Qaeda cannot replace. The official suggests the organisation is on a downward path that will be difficult to reverse. The domestic implications for Mr Obama are in the opposite direction, but may be just as important.

Obama got Osama.

That's what some people chanted when the news of Osama Bin Laden's killing broke. But will it have any impact on the President Barack Obama's politics and popularity?

Mr Obama has gone out of his way to stress that "get Bin Laden" was his direct instruction and that the arch villain's death is, in part, his victory. White House officials are doing all they can to capitalise on what looks like a mood of nationwide elation.

Any president who "got" Bin Laden would benefit. Former President Bill Clinton's efforts were mocked by George W Bush. Then he failed too, losing Bin Laden in the caves along the border land, as US soldiers stood by.

But perhaps Mr Obama will benefit more than most. His style of decision making is to take time, to deliberate, to chew over every option. His critics call it dithering. There are now some excellent "tick tocks" as they are called here - blow by blow accounts of the decision making process. But you always have to remember all sources are in the circle, and liable to portray the president positively. It sounds as if Mr Obama gave this decision as much time and thought as all the others but away from the public gaze.

Not only did Mr Obama's security advisor John Brennan praise him, but Republicans have even called his decision "gutsy". He did not simply go for bombs or drones but rather a helicopter raid. One insider is quoted as saying that Black Hawk Down was mentioned a few times in the discussions. When that helicopter did go down, Mr Obama surely thought of Jimmy Carter and Iran.

So he's a risk taker, too. It also makes him look focused on what is truly in the US's national interest. You can argue Iraq wasn't, Libya wasn't, even Afghanistan no longer is. But getting the head of al-Qaeda clearly was a number one priority in the minds of many Americans, and Mr Obama decided it was his as well.

Even habitual enemies, indeed even Rush Limbaugh, have praised him. At a reception for Republicans and Democrats last night, he got a standing ovation.

So the wind is behind him. Whence will he sail? At a White House dinner for members of Congress, he used Bin Laden's killing as a call for unity.

He said: "We were reminded again that there is a pride in what this nation stands for, and what we can achieve, that runs far deeper than party, far deeper than politics."

From Bin Laden, he moved effortlessly to domestic public enemy number one, the deficit. "It is my fervent hope that we can harness some of that unity and some of that pride to confront the many challenges that we still face," Mr Obama said.

On Thursday, Mr Obama will travel to New York City to remember those who died in Bin Laden's assault on America. I expect more talk of unity but perhaps some big foreign policy themes as well. There are those who think the halo of success makes it easier for the president to confront a military that wants July's Afghanistan wind-down to be small and fairly insignificant. Others, however, think the momentum runs the other way, and that it gives all the more reason to stay and finish the job.

So the killing sends waves that will wash against these shores and those of a wider world. Some are saying this moment assures Mr Obama's re-election. It assures no such thing.
Apart from the obvious point that there can be many other unexpected events that will have an impact, positive or negative, It just doesn't work like that. However huge this event snow seems, wait a couple of months. In the relentless frenzy of the 24-hour media cycle, it will probably be half forgotten by the the time of the election.

This far out, only events that mean change to people's lives on a day-to-day basis have that sort of game changing impact. But image is important. The president has burnished his in the eyes of many Americans and looks like a resolute commander-in-chief. He knows it, and intends to milk the moment for all it is worth.

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