PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has cited the “patience and persistence” shown by former senator George Mitchell in Northern Ireland as a model for his administration’s pursuit of its domestic and foreign policy goals.
In an hour-long press conference at the White House, televised during prime time, the president defended his ambitious, $3.6 trillion budget plan and accused his Republican critics of offering no alternative to revive the American economy.
Mr Obama signalled that the election of a new right-wing government in Israel would not make the path to peace in the Middle East any easier, but he pointed to the settlement in Northern Ireland as evidence of the importance of sustained engagement.
“You know, we were here for St Patrick’s Day and you’ll recall that we had what had been previously sworn enemies celebrating here in this very room, leaders from the two sides in Northern Ireland that, a couple of decades ago or even a decade ago, people would have said could never achieve peace. And here they were, jointly appearing and talking about their commitment even in the face of violent provocation. And what that tells me is that if you stick to it, if you are persistent, then these problems can be dealt with,” he said.
“I’m a big believer in persistence. I think that when it comes to domestic affairs, if we keep on working at it, if we acknowledge that we make mistakes sometimes and that we don’t always have the right answer and we’re inheriting very knotty problems, that we can pass healthcare, we can find better solutions to our energy challenges, we can teach our children more effectively, we can deal with a very real budget crisis.”
As he prepares to travel to London next week for a meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) industrialised nations, the president issued a thinly-veiled criticism of European governments that are reluctant to introduce big economic stimulus packages.
“What I’ve suggested is that all of us are going to have to take steps in order to lift the economy. We don’t want a situation in which some countries are making extraordinary efforts and other countries aren’t, with the hope that somehow the countries that are making those important steps lift everybody up,” he said.
“The goal at the G20 summit, I think, is to do a couple of things: Number one, say to all countries, let’s do what’s necessary in order to create jobs and to get the economy moving again.
“Let’s avoid steps that could result in protectionism that would further contract global trade. Let’s focus on how are we going to move our regulatory process forward in order that we do not see the kinds of systemic breakdowns that we’ve already seen.”
Mr Obama was on Capitol Hill yesterday to urge Senate Democrats to support his budget plan and he suggested during his press conference that he would take a flexible approach to the negotiations in Congress during the coming week.
However, he rejected Republican criticism that his plans to invest in healthcare, education and infrastructure projects represented an irresponsible recipe for ballooning deficits and unsustainable national debt.
“There’s an interesting reason why some of these critics haven’t put out their own budget,” he said. “And the reason is because they know that in fact the biggest driver of long-term deficits are the huge healthcare costs that we’ve got out here that we’re going to have to tackle, and that if we don’t deal with some of the structural problems in our deficit, ones that were here long before I got here, then we’re going to continue to see some of the problems in those out-years.”
In answer to a question about how the issue of race had impacted on the early weeks of his presidency, Mr Obama said his focus had been almost entirely on the economy, which affected Americans of all ethnic backgrounds.
“Obviously at the inauguration I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country. But that lasted about a day,” he said.
“And, you know, right now the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged, and that is are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to reopen, keep America safe. And that’s what I’ve been spending my time thinking about.”