President Obama has just announced that Osama Bin Laden is dead. I am sure there will be a lot of discussions on the matter, of how it will affect relationship with the Muslim world, of how this will affect military operation in Pakistan and many others.
One question I want to explore is its potential effect on the 2012 Presidential election.
This is a huge achievement for the Obama administration for one reason: by choice or by accident, the Republicans made Bin Laden the center of their administration and they failed to close the issue it satisfactorily. President Bush was positioned as a war president and I remember during the 2004 election when I was in Ann Arbor, the Republicans relentlessly attacked the Democrats for being soft on War on Terror. The Republicans put themselves as the only party that could lead the US in time of war.
In the end, Bin Laden was the political object of the war, regardless of his strategic value. Yet, four years later, eight years later, he was nowhere in sight, still roaming the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hence, the Republican administration under Bush failed politically.
Now that Bin Laden has been killed by the US military, the objective has been achieved. And was achieved by a Democrat administration.
For a party that is traditionally seen as the one with the experience and the backbone in terms of foreign policy, this cannot be good for the Republicans of 2012. Surely, among the pro-war groups that centered its motive around the need to avenge, the Democrats are the heroes, not the Republicans.
As security concerns slowly retreat into the background and merge with various political noise, so too the likelihood of us seeing a Republican President in 2012.