Next US president 'will have to unite the nation'

WHOEVER wins the US presidential elections faces more responsibilities than any other president in 60 years, participants in a debate said yesterday.

Gary Wasserman, speaking from the Democratic outlook, and James Patti, representing the Republican viewpoint, agreed that the next US president would have to unite an America that has become extremely bipolar over the past year or so.

The debate on ‘The American Presidential Elections: Democratic vs Republican Perspectives’ was hosted by the Centre for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Q).

The moderator was David Foster, senior news anchor at Al Jazeera English.

Wasserman, a visiting professor at SFS-Q, took the first shot: “Why is there so much confusion about what is seemingly the only choice?”

“(John) McCain (the Republican nominee) has embraced most of the policies of President Bush, on the Iraq war, alternate energy proposals, on tax cuts and so on,” he said.

He described the Republican party as “corrupt and inefficient, once they are in power.”

“Therefore we need Barack Obama (the Democratic candidate) for his policies on universal accessible healthcare, economy and international relations,” he said.

Challenging the remarks, Patti, who represented Rhode Island as a delegate to his party’s national convention, said the Republican party was “not the party of President Bush. It is the party of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.”

“Barack Obama lacks the experience, courage, honour, leadership, wisdom and other virtues important for the job. He opposed the now successful surge in Iraq in 2007, calling it a war lost.”

According to him, the US is a centre-right nation and Democrats promise a hard left which is not acceptable to all.

Questions related to the Jewish vote, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iraq war, the economic crisis facing the US, vice presidential picks and other issues followed.

Asked how the next president could make Americans feel better, Patti responded: “This campaign has been going on for more than 20 months. We had eleven overwhelmingly primary debates alone. So it has really divided the country, while the challenges ahead are too great. The next president will have to unite the public to make them feel better.”

Wasserman said: “Americans have a lot of reasons to be upset about. We manage to consume 25% of the world’s energy while producing only 5%. We have managed to evade questions on the environment (Kyoto Protocol), on foreign policy, on instabilities around the world. We can be a leader in this world if we start listening to the world.”

Earlier, CIRS director Mehran Kamrava briefed the audience on the centre’s upcoming events.