ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS: Political surprises, global terrorism mark 2015

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

By all accounts, the political arena has proved to be full of surprises this year. We’ve witnessed the improbable and inexorable rise of the outsider candidate, as first-time office seekers Ben Carson and Donald Trump have led the Republican primary race for the better part of the year. The assumption that Hillary Clinton would rise uncontested to the Democratic nomination has also been challenged by the improbable left-flank insurgency of Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

But the agitation in the political arena belies a lingering ambivalence on the part of the American public toward politics as usual. Interparty partisanship that has raged since the first congressional budget ceiling debacle in 2011, in which Congress failed to pass a budget and caused the country to teeter on the precipice of financial default.

Since then, the country has largely been left to muddle in a sort of societal purgatory with nothing underfoot and nothing in sight to save an impalpable grayness. The country seems truly set adrift, with no firm direction and no promise of a way forward through the dense fog of internecine conflicts. People are demanding better leadership.

The political doldrums also extended to the economy. While the Obama administration hailed top-line employment figures that should signal a full recovery from the lingering Great Recession, the Federal Reserve Bank has observed that slack in the labor market signaled by all-time-low labor force participation poses a major obstacle to economic growth. Despite hitting its employment goals for the past two quarters, the Fed has refused to raise key interest rates to normal levels, citing labor market slack and volatility abroad as aggravating factors.

The world front, in stark contrast to the stagnant domestic front, has been marked by extreme volatility. Two major terrorist attacks in Paris and a foiled terrorist attack on a Paris-bound train have occurred over the past year.

The first attack, which targeted the headquarters of Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 innocent civilians, put Europe on notice that Islamic extremism poses a clear and present menace. The global attention garnered by the attack has been credited by some as emboldening extremist groups to up the ante and carry out even more ambitious attacks. It also belied President Obama’s characterization this year that, in contrast to other terrorist groups, the self-proclaimed Islamic State is a mere “JV team.” As the latest attack on a series of targets in Paris that resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians clearly proves, the Islamic State is capable of major league terrorism.

The year also marked the expansion of the war in Syria and Iraq. Also contrary to Mr. Obama’s claims, neither the Islamic State nor the war in general has been contained. Russia, sensing a leadership vacuum in the region, stepped up its involvement in the Syrian conflict, bombing what it says are terrorist enclaves; the West has insisted that Russia has targeted moderate anti-Assad rebels. There’s been so much amorphous talk about ’moderate’ rebels, without any demonstrable proof of any such force existing, that the public has largely lost faith in the Obama administration’s cerebral paralysis.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not hesitated, however, and Russia’s entrance into the conflict has dramatically altered the calculus. It has bolstered besieged Syrian President Bashar Assad’s tenuous hold on power, and dramatically raised the risk of an international incident that could drag in the U.S. and its NATO partners. In fact, it already has done so. Turkey’s U.S.-supplied F-16s shot down a Russian warplane along Syria’s Turkish border, sparking a major escalation in hostilities as well as the possibility that NATO (of which Turkey is a full member) will have to defend Turkey against Russian retaliation.

Pivoting briefly back to the domestic front, the culture wars have erupted like brush fires amid the arid California timberland. In the wake of a Supreme Court ruling sanctioning same-sex marriage nationwide, states and localities have attempted to carve out religious freedom exemptions for individuals and small businesses, a move that comes on the heels of the Hobby Lobby cases last year over the provision of free birth control by religiously affiliated companies. Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling and was briefly jailed for refusing to comply with a judge’s order that she do so. She became both a cause celebre and a political hot potato, with some presidential candidates jockeying to champion her cause and others seeking to minimize their involvement in what eventually became a political circus.

All in all, this year has been one characterized by intransigence and volatility. An American public distracted by its own political drama has largely ignored the broader world, which has not been the tame, contained beast that was promised. The Obama administration seems to be bent on plodding a course of retreat amid a rapidly advancing Islamist threat, despite the dire implications of that strategy for long-term peace and security in Europe, the Middle East and, ultimately, the American homeland.

• Armstrong Williams is sole owner/manager of Howard Stirk Holdings and executive editor of American CurrentSee online magazine.