President-elect Barack Obama will inherit two wars and the worst economic conditions in three generations when he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. Ironically, that challenge might be a blessing for Obama — unemployment is so high and consumer confidence so low that even modest improvements will let him claim progress.
Obama also brings extraordinary assets to the task.
The president-elect enjoys high approval ratings, well-regarded Cabinet appointees and a smooth running transition operation that grew almost seamlessly from his successful campaign team. Fellow Democrats will hold solid House and Senate majorities to help move his agenda through Congress.
But political veterans and presidential scholars say Obama can’t waste time. He must decide which major issues to tackle in his first 100 days in office, the time when his political capital will be at its peak.
His powers and popularity might wane as he looks to end the Iraq War and enact repairs to an economic system that has ravaged jobs, home ownership, retirement accounts and public optimism.
“His goal is to strike a sustainable balance between the politics of sequencing and the politics of urgency,” said William Galston, a domestic policy assistant in former president Bill Clinton’s administration. He said Obama must determine “what are the risks of overreaching versus underreaching.”
So far, Obama has given few hints about which goals might have to wait. Asked recently about tougher regulations on auto emissions and reinstating an offshore drilling ban, for example, he said his advisers would review them “in the weeks to come.”
Earlier this month, he told reporters he had not decided “how we’re going to deal with the rollback of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”
Presidential historians say Obama will have to set priorities soon, even if he does it discreetly in the hope of avoiding confrontations with key constituency groups. On overhauling health care, for example, Princeton historian Fred Greenstein said Obama might create study groups and commissions that will push it to the back burner without leaving the impression that it is being ignored.
Greenstein, who has written several books on the presidency, said he gives Obama high marks for running his transition with the same brand of assertive self-confidence he showed during the campaign.
The transition has been characterized, he said, by “a very strong sense of maintaining control and professing to be waiting in the wings but filling up all the presidential space, and doing things in textbook order.”
Obama’s first high-stakes policy choices will involve a costly stimulus plan, which might be ready for his signature within days of taking office. His aides are working with congressional leaders on a package that could spend US$850 billion over two years, much of it on infrastructure, schools and other construction-heavy projects.
He must pick winners and losers from scores of interest groups scrambling for a piece of the stimulus pie. Some want billions of dollars for energy programs, including ethanol pipelines, nuclear power plants and “green” projects that use renewable fuels. Others want mass transit help, cell telephone towers, travel and tourism marketing and countless tax breaks.
“The fiscal stimulus bill gives him a tremendous opportunity to work with Congress quickly to produce a very significant piece of legislation” that helps the economy and “makes a down payment on some policies central to his agenda,” said Thomas Mann, a government scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Meanwhile, Mann said, Obama can also launch discussions of how to revise energy and health care policies “without setting specific dates for completion.”
Issues that cannot wait, however, include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months, although he has left himself some wiggle room. Top military leaders advocate a somewhat slower schedule, and the new president will have to resolve the matter.
Obama wants to increase the US military presence in Afghanistan, which might draw more public attention and controversy if the economic news were not so dominant.
For now, at least, Obama enjoys strong public support. Political insiders say his Cabinet picks are savvy and substantial. A recent AP-GfK poll found that nearly three in four Americans approve of how Obama has handled the transition. That’s about the same level of support his two immediate predecessors enjoyed.
But there is no guarantee that Obama’s actions will reverse the dramatic drops in employment and the stock market, or the crises in the financial and automaking sectors. With billions of taxpayer dollars pouring in, Americans may want results soon, and the new president’s popularity could rapidly diminish if they don’t materialize.
“I find it hard to believe that, no matter how skillful he is, he can sustain this level of hope and support,” Galston said.
“To govern is to choose,” he said, and every time a president chooses, some groups are disappointed.
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reach the point of confidence that they can start and win a war to destroy the democratic culture on Taiwan, any future decision to do so may likely be directly affected by the CCP’s ability to promote wars on the Korean Peninsula, in Europe, or, as most recently, on the Indian subcontinent. It stands to reason that the Trump Administration’s success early on May 10 to convince India and Pakistan to deescalate their four-day conventional military conflict, assessed to be close to a nuclear weapons exchange, also served to
After India’s punitive precision strikes targeting what New Delhi called nine terrorist sites inside Pakistan, reactions poured in from governments around the world. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issued a statement on May 10, opposing terrorism and expressing concern about the growing tensions between India and Pakistan. The statement noticeably expressed support for the Indian government’s right to maintain its national security and act against terrorists. The ministry said that it “works closely with democratic partners worldwide in staunch opposition to international terrorism” and expressed “firm support for all legitimate and necessary actions taken by the government of India
The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US. It is a warning not just for Washington, but for Taipei, too. Claims from both sides remain contested, but a broader picture is emerging among experts who track China’s air force and fighter jet development: Beijing’s defense systems are growing increasingly credible. Pakistan said its deployment of Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighters downed multiple Indian aircraft, although New Delhi denies this. There are caveats: Even if Islamabad’s claims are accurate, Beijing’s equipment does not offer a direct comparison
To recalibrate its Cold War alliances, the US adopted its “one China policy,” a diplomatic compromise meant to engage with China and end the Vietnam War, but which left Taiwan in a state of permanent limbo. Half a century later, the costs of that policy are mounting. Taiwan remains a democratic, technologically advanced nation of 23 million people, yet it is denied membership in international organizations and stripped of diplomatic recognition. Meanwhile, the PRC has weaponized the “one China” narrative to claim sovereignty over Taiwan, label the Taiwan Strait as its “internal waters” and threaten international shipping routes that carry more
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