DST 2 [Syntèse CCP/E3A, 3h00] – Obama’s Legacy, ISIS & Midterms Vous rédigerez, en anglais et en 400 MOTS (+/- 10%), une synthèse des documents proposés. Vous indiquerez à la fin de votre synthèse le NOMBRE DE MOTS utilisés. Votre synthèse comportera un TITRE comptabilisé dans le nombre de mots. DOCUMENT 1A DOCUMENT 1B ‘From Hope to Nope’, November 3rd 2010 ‘Golfer In Chief’, September 7th 2014 NB. Relates to Obama’s midterm defeat. NB. ‘Forward’ was Obama’s reelection slogan

DOCUMENT 2 The Obama Doctrine Adapted from The Economist, December 1st 2012 (460 words). By cynical tradition “abroad” is where American presidents go to seek a legacy, after their domestic agendas have stalled. This is especially true of second-term presidents. As they lose momentum at home, the temptation is to head overseas in search of crises that only American clout can resolve. At the outset of his second term, Barack Obama seems to be planning the opposite approach. Mr Obama and his team believe that his outstanding task is to secure a domestic legacy. Their fear is that foreign entanglements may threaten that goal. It may help that he secured something of a global legacy on the day he was elected four years ago amid worldwide adulation, peaking with a Nobel peace prize awarded after less than a year in office, essentially for not being George W. Bush. On the 2012 campaign trail, Mr Obama earned some of his warmest applause when he vowed to bring troops back from Afghanistan, ending more than a decade of war-fighting that has cost thousands of American lives and more than a trillion dollars. Time for nation-building ‘right here at home’, he constantly declared, to cheers. Democrats need to make America globally competitive, Obama’s former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, wrote. Whether it means fixing failing schools, potholed roads, snail-like internet networks or a broken immigration system, the second-term mission must be to ‘come home and rebuild America’. Yet the world keeps calling. From Gaza to Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, the disputed waters around China or even the euro zone, foreign crises threaten to sidetrack Mr Obama.

Looking overseas, wariness is all. Senior officials say that Mr Obama aims to be “present but not deeply involved” around the globe. By winding down the Bush legacy of an all-consuming military response to the September 11th attacks, Mr Obama has freed up “national security bandwidth” to engage with the world in all its complexity. Inside the government, there is debate as to whether Mr Obama’s arms-length foreign strategy will survive contact with a turbulent world. Elements of this debate are familiar. After the cold war’s end, Americans wrestled with whether to accept the role of global policeman. In 1993 Colin Powell (then the top soldier) told the Senate that when the world dialled 911, the emergency phone number, America was expected to answer. Nobody is calling for a return to the sweeping ambitions of the Bush era after the 2001 terror attacks. The current debate resembles that of the 1990s: in these discussions 911 is again a phone number, not a date. Fresh crises will come. If America is pulled in deeply, it will be against all Mr Obama’s instincts. The president has plans; but they revolve around fixing America, not the world. DOCUMENT 3 Foreign Policy Is Wildcard in U.S. Midterm Elections Adapted from The Wall Street Journal, September 10th 2014 (424 words) Foreign policy has catapulted to the center of the U.S. political stage just two months before the 2014 midterm elections. A president who first won the office due to his opposition to the Iraq war and then who won re-election, in part, by touting the end of that war, announced to the nation Wednesday night that he was launching a new war in the region –against the terrorist group ISIS. As our colleague Andrea Mitchell put it so well: more war in Iraq is hardly the legacy President Obama wanted. Mr. Obama has struggled in his second term to advance his domestic agenda, from raising the minimum wage to overhauling immigration laws. His approval rating has been at or near record low for months, a concern for many Democrats in the final weeks of the campaign season, as presidents with low approval ratings typically see big losses for their parties in midterm elections. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that the drop in confidence in Mr. Obama's oversight of foreign policy has reached into his core supporters. Even among women, a bastion of pro-Obama sentiment, approval of his handling of foreign policy has dropped to 33% from 43% a month ago. "That's going to be a drag on Democrats, there's no way around that," said William Galston, former aide to President Bill Clinton, who said the midterms are "bound to be something of a referendum on the president." The dynamic put added pressure on Mr. Obama's Wednesday speech detailing his strategy for confronting Islamic State –also known as ISIS. The prime-time speech was designed not just to explain Mr. Obama's goals but also to reclaim the mantle of authority after months of being buffeted by world events. Mr. Obama came under fire for playing golf immediately after speaking about one journalist's death, and for saying recently that "we don't have a strategy yet" for responding to ISIS. Fellow Democrats cringed at those episodes and many were relieved when the White House scheduled Wednesday's speech. Addressing the threat from ISIS could be a pivot point that either revives Mr. Obama's beleaguered presidency or reinforces doubts about his leadership. "It can play both ways," said Peter Fenn, a Democratic political consultant. "Right now Democrats are in tough shape to hold the Senate, and the events of the next seven weeks could be quite important. This could be the defining moment." The Republicans only need a net gain of six seats to take control of the Senate.