Following Halloween, US voters played trick-or-treat with US President Barack Obama, whose Democratic Party was beaten soundly, losing its majority in the US House of Representatives, seats in the US Senate and several governorships in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Obama, the first black president elected to the White House, came into office on the back of a promise to bring change, but US voters have changed the game for Obama, proving that a political promise can make or break a politician. In Taiwan, where the special municipality elections will take place on Nov 27, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is projecting Obama’s problems onto President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) maintains that Taiwan is not the US and that the comparison is therefore invalid.
The US midterm elections, in which all seats of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate seats are up for election, are not all that different from Taiwan’s special municipality elections. It is still too early to use the US midterm elections to assess Obama’s chances for winning re-election in 2012, but if we are trying to judge the possibility of re-election based on the general situation in the US or Taiwan, both Obama’s Democrats and Ma’s KMT are in for a series of challenges.
First, both Obama and Ma had the advantage that comes with the control of the -legislature when they first came to power, but they have not been able to capitalize on it. During his campaign, Obama constantly said that it would be difficult in the short term to fix the mess left by the previous administration, while officials at every level of the Ma administration say they are restricted by having to deal with problems left by the DPP government.
The problem is that both the Republicans and the DPP were voted out of office because voters were disappointed with their performance. US voters expected Obama to change things, while Taiwanese voters expected things to get better as soon as Ma came to power, as one of his election slogans claimed. Two years have gone by and impatient US voters have now used their vote to negate Obama’s advantage, while in the three-in-one elections in Taiwan last year, Taiwanese voters taught the KMT a lesson. The special municipality elections at the end of this month will pose yet another test for Ma and the KMT.
Second, the main reason for Obama’s loss is the sluggish economy and the high rate of unemployment, while in Taiwan, the KMT continues to say that Ma is at least outperforming Obama on the economy. The Ma administration, however, relies completely on cross-strait trade and economic exchanges, views the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) as a panacea to Taiwan’s economic troubles and uses short-term, temporary employment to embellish surging unemployment figures.
On the other hand, the KMT is unable to understand the difficulty of job searching and unemployment, and it also ignores the possible negative impact of the ECFA on middle and low-income households, small and medium-sized businesses and people in central and southern Taiwan.
Third, the US elections have been overshadowed by the Tea Party movement. While not a typical political party, many of its supporters are extreme conservatives who clearly oppose big government and advocate budget cuts and minimal government spending. They have also turned into an anti-Obama force and Republican Party candidates are now forced to seek the Tea Party’s support.
Although Taiwan’s special municipality elections are not affected by such conservative organizations, most of the Taiwanese public are disappointed with the Ma administration and the KMT’s performance in Taipei, Taipei County and Taichung.
The Ma administration has recently been busy issuing largesse in the three special municipalities it currently runs, such as the construction of social housing and offering free travel on the new Luzhou (Lujhou) MRT line in Taipei or electronic book bags for elementary school -students. Instead of -implementing these policies over the past four years, the policies are now all being promoted in the run-up to the special municipality elections, at great expense.
The bill is left to later -generations without consideration of the country’s financial crisis. The KMT still believes the old myth that government spending will buy lots of votes. Whether that still holds true will depend on the wisdom of Taiwanese voters.
Finally, Obama and Ma are putting too much stock in the high voter support by which they were elected and they both underestimate the public’s desire for reform. Obama’s approval ratings fell from 54 percent a year ago to 45 percent ahead of Tuesday’s elections, while Ma’s approval ratings have been in the doldrums following the debacle surrounding the rescue effort following Typhoon Morakot in early August last year.
The key here is their habit of using a top-down approach to persuade voters to accept their views, while ignoring the importance of the humility and willingness to listen and engage in sincere dialogue with the public that any national leader requires. Obama also focused too much on healthcare reform and neglected the unemployment situation, while Ma has ignored calls for public supervision and forced through the ECFA.
Liu Shih-chung is a senior research fellow at the Taipei-based Taiwan Brain Trust.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
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