Is Obama a lamer duck now?

Jay Kuten PHOTO/FILE

THE usual obsequies are being intoned for the Obama presidency after his party suffered a major defeat in last week's elections.

There is little doubt that the turnover of control of the United States Senate to Republicans will be making life harder for Barack Obama and his team. The question that needs addressing is just how much harder and, though the senatorial loss is an acknowledged wound, is it a fatal one?

Republicans, whose own demise was being touted by the pundits in 2008 when American memories still contained the olfactory presence of the Bush years - the lives wasted on unnecessary wars and an economy teetering on the brink - have proved that oppositionist politics can win elections. Their new challenge, like Obama's in the past, is can they govern?

If their past is any guide, Republicans will try to repeal Obamacare, roll back taxes on the rich and corporations and continue an attempted unravelling of the social safety nets, with plans to privatise medicare (health insurance for elderly) and social security (superannuation).

The first will be opposed by the health-insurance companies now growing rich on new subscribers. The latter would cost Republicans support of their core constituency, older white males. Obama may not have to veto a thing, just sit back in his purported passivity as the Republicans organise their usual circular firing squads.

As to the effectiveness of the rest of his presidency, much depends - as it often does - on character. It's the last quarter of his particular game. Much of what he's done and not done has been marked by the contrast between the early passion generated by his rhetoric and the diffidence - some say "coolness" - of his actions.

"Don't do stupid stuff" seems a good mantra for his cautious foreign policy, one that has been a marked contrast with the bully-boy impulsiveness of his predecessor, whose gut-formed policies did result in "stupid stuff".

But Americans, failing to read the minutes of the last meeting - as the late United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson put it - haven't given him much credit for it.

And his Republican critics have had it that he's weak as well as a dictator. Obama will need to resist the demands of the Sunday talk-show warriors in the Republican Senate that he do even more to muddy the Middle East waters by allowing the "training mission" now re-started in Iraq to creep into yet another full-scale Korea-Vietnam-Iraq 2-Afghanistan.

Obama's best hope is in the domestic arena. If he's to leave a better legacy, he'll need to "bring it" in these two years with decisive action on matters that can be carried out through executive action alone, without need for legislative concurrence.

He has signalled an interest in executive action on immigration, a matter stalled in successive legislative sessions for a decade. Since immigration affects the Hispanic community, a core Democratic constituency and one whose support will be vital to the Democratic presidential contender in 2016 (whoever she may be), it's a tempting low-hanging fruit for unilateral presidential action. Republicans may gnash their teeth, even threaten impeachment, but that is a political poison pill.

A second constituency whose votes were sorely missed this election cycle was that of young people, who last showed up in numbers during the presidential election of 2012. Too many are overburdened, university debt crushing their hopes.

Debt relief - even lowering interest rates by presidential fiat - would be a no-brainer.

Any such action would need to be followed with full-throated engagement with the people, using the chief tool of the presidency - its pulpit. In that case, he'll be able to say with Mark Twain, "reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated".

One bit of perspective is needed. While this election was a loss for Democrats and Obama, only 36 per cent of the eligible voters showed up. Republicans got their endorsement from about 19 per cent of those eligible. It's not exactly ringing, is it?

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.