It seems that Obama will be re-elected. The Democrats will keep the Senate, the Republicans will keep the House; everything will stay the same!

What can be expected under these circumstances? Not much actually. Republicans may accommodate themselves to the new circumstances for a little while and cooperate in the Congress but the USA will continue go on living under a political system which is now dysfunctional. Any economic recovery will be weak at best and long term issues will not be addressed. At the end of the day, Obama will not turn out to be the transitional President he probably intended to be. By ‘transitional’ I mean a President who would move the US toward a more functional political system, one able to accommodate the new international and national realities. This has not happened and cannot be expected to happen, whoever wins in November 2012. What comes afterwards is the real question. Nobody knows.

In my view, there are two fundamental issues underlying current US problems. First, existing imperial policies towards the rest of the world are a heavy burden on the economy and are increasingly unsustainable. Second, the prevailing, semi-rural political culture prevents modernization of the country’s institutions and makes it impossible to address long term issues such as health care, education, immigration, infrastructure and taxation, to mention the most crucial ones.

In a multi-polar world, the power of the USA is no longer absolute. It is increasingly disputed, particularly in the aftermath of the disastrous invasion of Iraq.  The US has no moral standing in the court of international opinion. New players are emerging. While the US will continue to be a superpower for several years more, it can no longer impose its will in the sometimes capricious manner it has before. It can only achieve major goals through cooperation with other competing powers. For this to happen, the US has no choice but to accept, indeed actively to promote, the role of other countries and international institutions on a more equal footing. Of necessity it must adopt a less aggressive posture in the international arena. Such a reorientation should allow the country to spend less on the military, fight fewer wars (or no wars at all) and thereby save trillions of dollars. Nobel laureate J. Stieglitz claims that the war in Iraq has so far cost more than three trillion dollars. Not all of these costs are shown or even made explicit in the budget but they burden the economy nevertheless. Expenditures on defense and security now exceed a trillion dollars per year, if all items are properly accounted for. This represents over 30 percent of federal expenditures and is more than double the cost of Medicare (which is self-financed anyway!). The USA spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Imperial policies are inextricably linked to an oil-intensive economy. Actions in Iraq, in Libya, and prospective actions in Iran illustrate the case. These policies destroy countries and contribute to destroying the environment.

The existing political culture is also out of step with the needs of the population and with the progress achieved elsewhere by humanity. The governance of the US is based on a Constitution which is over 200 years old and was written for a rural country with one tenth of the territory the US now occupies. The Constitution established essentially a confederation. It limits the power of the federal government to implement policy and opens the door for the Supreme Court to legitimize or to overturn measures that any government or congress in the world must undertake. Given the political and electoral system, the Supreme Court is likely to remain conservative, not to say reactionary, in many respects, leaving little room for progressive, transformative public policy. The Constitution is in many respects obsolete.

The public debate on gun control provides a forceful illustration of the existing political culture. There are over 300 million guns in the hands of civilians, many of theses are semi-automatic weapons which did not exist at the time the Constitution and the second amendment were adopted. Over 12,000 people are killed by gunfire every year in the US; many, many times more than in the whole of Europe. The sacrosanct right to have guns, any kind of guns, is proclaimed by every politician that wants to keep his or her job. The right to own guns is held to be absolute and supreme, particularly in the so-called Bible Belt, where official monuments and flags honor the Confederacy.

The electoral system is also clearly broken; there is no independent electoral adjudication, the entire process is directly controlled by local governments. The 2000 election of G. Bush showed that the electoral system is grossly outdated. The election of the President by an Electoral College in which the winner takes all the electors from a given State means in fact that one vote does not count as one vote. Large segments of the country and population are marginalized and in effect are not represented. The highly politicized and ethnic-oriented redistricting system contributes to a less than fair representation of all citizens in Congress.

The climate created by the socio-political culture is such that in the most technologically advanced country, at least until recently, schools did not teach evolution and the majority of the population do not believe in it! There is no unified school curriculum based on science and the Arts, State and local boards have the strongest say. Parochialism replaces progress. Secularism has lost ground; probably the only such case among the industrialized nations. Environmental science is questioned and, in many cases, rejected. Regulations affecting entrenched interests are resisted and when norms are proposed, the process guarantees that by the time they are approved and implemented they have been so weakened and convoluted as to circumvent their original objectives.

There are powerful interests that prevent the political process from introducing real changes. It is precisely the power of such interests that will dictate that the status quo be maintained if Obama wins or, worse, the introduction of more regressive policies if he loses. Imperial policies are highly lucrative for the military-industrial complex and the oil industry. An obsolete institutional system works to the advantage of the gun industry, the so-called health industry and the financial sector, among others. Overcoming these interests is extremely difficult. They create and destroy politicians, who depend on them for financing. Movements such as “Occupy” are merely symbolic and rendered ineffective as long as they remain so. A few guys in tents in the center of a city rapidly become a mere tourist attraction. History proves that only broad movements, with clear objectives and massive mobilization across the country can force real change. Short of that, don’t expect very much from the coming elections!