Last updated: December 29, 2014


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Big job in front of our friend the US

NO country is more important to Australia than the United States. Culturally, ideologically and strategically it is our closest friend and ally.

Our immediate economic wealth might lie more with the giants of Asia but our broader economic interests, like those of the rest of the developed world, rely upon a healthy and prosperous America just as our strategic interests do.

What happens there matters to the world and to Australia just as much, if not more, than anywhere else. The Melbourne Cup may be the race that stops our nation, but the US election is the race that stops the planet.

Four years ago Barack Obama won that race in a landslide on a promise of hope and change. His optimism and soaring oratory inspired the apathetic and mobilised the disengaged.

Sadly those hopes were not realised and little has changed. The flailing economy he inherited has been stabilised but is still stagnant after four years. The new brand of politics he vowed to bring to Washington is nowhere to be seen. Instead his administration has been crippled by an entrenched and hostile deadlock between the White House and Congress.

Notwithstanding Obama's impressive effort in capturing key swing states thanks to his massive on-the-ground machine, the neck-and-neck popular vote shows what overpromising and underdelivering costs a political leader.He has wiped away in a stroke 3 per cent of the voting population - literally millions of voters. Critically these were the newly engaged, independent or soft-Republican votes he picked up in 2008. He held on to his flank - blue collar workers and progressives - but lost the centre.This does not bode well for resolving the tug-of-war he will return to in Washington, where Tea Party Republicans are keen to paint the President as an agent of the far left. Had he had a greater mandate from centrist voters he would have been able to make a case for carriage of his policies. As it stands, both parties have effectively just retreated to their corners ready for the next round of fighting.

Sound familiar? It should. Like Obama, the Gillard government has been forced to over-pander to the Greens and the hard left in an effort to shore up its traditional base because its support among the middle band of voters has collapsed. Like Obama, this collapse came about because Labor failed to manage expectations. It is a recipe for partisanship and obstructionism rather than compromise and progress.

However, for Obama's, America's and Australia's sake, we hope this does not continue. We hope the rhetoric is replaced by realism.

The President has an opportunity now to appeal to Republicans' instincts by implementing new business-focused measures that will kickstart the economy where government intervention has failed. Obama won plaudits from Democrats and Republicans alike by slashing red tape to counter a natural disaster. He can win the same kind of bipartisan support by slashing red tape to counter an economic one. His offer to sit down with Mitt Romney to tackle the economic crisis is a promising start and we hope he makes good on it.

The President also faces big, unresolved challenges in the Middle East, most notably the Afghan war effort in which we are inextricably linked to America's fate, and also the ongoing nuclear threat from Iran. Likewise America's stance in the Asia-Pacific region determines our role in the region and security at home.

Australia has no greater friend than the US, and happily it is a friendship that transcends party politics. We congratulate President Obama on his win and wish him well in making the right decisions for America and the world.