The U.S. midterm elections last November saw a seismic shift in American politics with the Democrats losing their majority in the House of Representatives. However, the Republicans in the House appear very much divided just a year before they start choosing their candidate for the 2012 presidential race, while President Barack Obama has rebounded quickly from the defeat to his party and repositioned himself as he seeks a second term, partners at a U.S.-based international law firm said at a recent seminar in Tokyo.
Speaking on the theme "Is change coming? — A preview of U.S. politics and policy in 2011" during the Keizai Koho Center-organized event on Feb. 17, Joshua Galper from Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe LLP said the Republican takeover of the House and their gains in the Senate have created a "very different environment for the president to operate in, for proposing legislation, and actually seeing something get done."
The new congressional landscape means that there will be less big legislation coming out in the next two years in the "kind of scope and size" that was seen in the first two years of the Obama administration, Galper said.