Time was when it was enough to assess a US president's external policy and towards India in particular to decide whether he was good for India. The times have changed.
What happens within the US — in other words, a US president's domestic agenda — matters as much as his external policies, if not more. Primarily on this count, we welcome President Obama's re-election.
Full Coverage of US Presidential Elections 2012
True, he has been louder in making protectionist noises against outsourcing. But outsourcing is an integral part of the dynamics of the global economy and no one can halt its onward march to encompass larger and larger areas of economic life, leave alone reverse it.
This is why President Obama has been pursuing a revamp of the US educational system, healthcare and information architecture, so as to raise the knowledge quotient of both US domestic activity and its workforce.
Innovation in the US is good for the US, but it is also good for the rest of the world, as computers, mobile phones and the internet, for example, demonstrate. Obama stands for inclusive growth, accommodation of immigrants and equality of opportunity, and Romney stood for the opposite.
The social values upheld by the Republicans are repugnant to women, decency and civil rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. It is welcome that these values have been rejected by US voters.
America's soft power ensures that its values and policies influence values and politics in other countries. The world is better off with the American people endorsing values of inclusion and respect for diversity.
Obama understands the need to improve financial regulation, even if his record shows modest success in this regard. Romney stood for lax regulation of the kind that precipitated the crisis of 2008.
Obama's victory means that the hope of disciplining global finance stays alive and that fiscal policies will be more responsible and supportive of near-term growth. That matters to the rest of the world.
Obama's foreign policy, too, is more nuanced and adaptive to the more dispersed nature of global power, unlike Romney's. Hope and progress, Obama's slogans, get a boost, the world over. That is welcome.
Article published by TOI
