US President Barack Obama is predicted to lose influence drastically not only in the domestic sphere but also internationally following the drubbing the Democrats received at the hands of the American voter in the mid-term election. The Tuesday vote means Republicans will now have a Senate majority and thus control Congress. They even won the race for governors in several states, and could retain even vulnerable turf such as Florida and Wisconsin.
In the second half of their second term, US Presidents typically enter a “lame duck” phase as politics begins to prepare for the next presidential race. In this phase, US leaders are known to seek out the international stage to perform. But this would be denied to President Obama as he seemed to fail on the foreign policy front — in dealing with Russia, in helping bring back order to West Asia and calm nerves in the Muslim world generally, or even in meeting the challenge posed by the recent Ebola crisis. On the whole he was seen as ineffectual. Under Mr Obama, the warmth appeared to go out of India’s equation with the US, and it wasn’t all to do with governance-related slackness on the Indian side in the Manmohan era made worse by Opposition obstreperousness in Parliament.
Under PM Narendra Modi, who has a comfortable majority in the House, India-US ties are likely to be more influenced by tax-related and other measures the government takes to woo international business.
