CAN THE OBAMA TEAM FIX AMERICA?

By R. A. Pearson

On January 8, 2009, Barack Obama was officially elected president of the Unites States with 365 Electoral College votes for Obama and Joe Biden and 173 votes for John McCain and Sarah Palin. The official election confirmed the November 2008 popular election. He was inaugurated on January 20, and took office in a time when the economy of America was the worst it has been in decades, when America is fighting two wars, and America’s international status is at a low ebb in many areas around the world. Furthermore, many Americans expect the new president to fix everything from the economy to the NCAA division one college football championship controversy by the fall, a tall order for any team. What does the Obama team have to do in the first one hundred days and beyond to get on the right track and stay there for four years?

There is no doubt the Obama Administration must move on the economic front at once. President Obama named Timothy Geithner, the New York Federal Reserve president, as his treasury secretary. Geithner will team up with Lawrence Summers, a treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton and former Harvard University president, who will take over the National Economic Council. Christina Romer will serve as director of the Council of Economic Advisers. Romer is a U.C. Berkeley professor of economics, and co-director of monetary economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Melody Barnes was named as director of the Domestic Policy Council. She was co-director of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama transition team, and also served as the senior domestic policy advisor to Obama during the campaign. Barnes previously worked at the Center for American Progress and as chief counsel to Sen. Ted Kennedy.

The Obama administration plans a two-pronged attack on the nation’s ailing economy. The Congress has already released the second half of a $700 billion financial bailout package formally known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) devised under the Bush administration. The Obama plan is to use at least $100 billion of this money in saving small banks and to rescue homes from foreclosure. They also plan to buy up bad paper debt from the mortgage debacle as was originally planed in the TARP legislation plan. This should give the Obama team about $350 billion to help the banking/mortgage end of the economy.

President Obama and Democratic lawmakers have also unveiled a massive $825 billion financial package to jolt America’s economy from the recession. Formally known as the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” the plan includes $275 billion in tax cuts and $550 billion in investments. The investments include spending on building and repairing the nation’s infrastructure, boosting energy production from renewable sources, expanding and improving medical care for low-income individuals and preventing cutbacks in school and college budgets and programs. The investment angle was the Democratic version of the bill and the Republicans added the tax cut making the bill truly bi-partisan. American workers will receive a refundable $500 tax credit. With the TARP funds and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan funds, the Obama team will have well over a trillion dollars to address the various aspects of the American financial crisis.

President Obama took the oath of office with America engaged in two wars in the Middle East, both basically insurrectionist in nature. The new president has opted to keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates, an appointee of President Bush, in order to assure continuity as the war plans call for a wind down in Iraq and an escalation in Afghanistan. The problem here is can the U. S. exit Iraq while stabilizing the Afghan population and countryside with the worn out forces it now has? There is no doubt the war weary American public is wanting these wars to end. Another monkey wrench in the Afghan mix is the state of our allies. Many of the national forces in this coalition refuse to allow their forces to engage in combat and many are considering ending their nation’s Afghanistan mission within the year. America may find itself with dwindling allies and larger bills to pay in Afghanistan much like we did in Iraq.

Foreign policy in the Obama administration will be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton will inherit a host of problems around the world especially the recent Israel-Gaza Palestinian dust up. In order to settle the problems of the area she will have to convince the Palestinians and Arabs she and the U.S. are honest brokers and not out to sell the Palestinians short at the negotiating table. It now seems like there is a war in the area every two years where some pseudo-terrorist/governmental Islamic group picks a war with Israel, gets the hell bombed out of its civilian population where it insists on fighting the war, and then the world, especially the U.S. has to come in with billions of dollars and repair the homes and infrastructure of the poor oppressed Moslem people. At the same time the insecurity in the region brought on by these conflicts helps to drive up the price America and the world pays for oil. This nonsense needs to end, and if Hamas and Hezbollah are not willing to talk, the world and Middle East need to move on without them, making it clear they and the prople they represent are on their own.

On the same day Mrs. Clinton formally took over at the State Department, President Obama designated former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, who negotiated the settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland, as a special envoy for the Middle East and announced former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke would serve as a special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama administration has made it clear to the world it intends to make positive moves in its diplomatic efforts in the Islamic world.

If there is a perceived weakness in the Obama team it is in his choices for his intelligence team. President Obama has tapped Leon Panetta, a former Clinton White House chief of staff with no direct intelligence experience, to head the CIA. He also chose retired Admiral Dennis Blair to serve as director of national intelligence, the top of the U.S. intelligence hierarchy. Adm. Blair is a former head of the U.S. Pacific Command who won high marks for countering terrorism in Southeast Asia after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Blair was a national security aide to Pres. Clinton. The choice of Panetta and Blair seem to indicate the Obama administration is willing to take a different road from the Bush administration on issues such as the use of torture, and detention in the “war on terror.” The choice of Panetta drew fire from intelligence professionals and some members of Congress because Panetta has no direct intelligence experience. However, Obama insists Panetta will be a good CIA head because he is a good manager, was involved in high-level national security decisions and was privy to daily intelligence briefings while working for Pres. Clinton and will have the advice of Deputy Director Steve Kappes who will be staying on at the CIA.

While the economy, the wars, foreign policy and adjusting the national intelligence team are major issues for the Obama administration; the team must also tackle other major issues. For one, the Veterans Administration, being now run by General Eric Shinseki, must take care of thousands of wounded and psychologically wounded veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while addressing many of the veteran’s cases from other wars the VA was allowed to slough off in the past. The growing number of Americans without healthcare insurance and inadequate healthcare insurance is another problem President Obama must address; it was a cornerstone of his campaign. The Agriculture bill needs to include real help for farmers who need help, but to cut out subsidies for those who do not. And the list goes on of real problems the Obama Administration must tackle to really fix America.

Of course to do so President Obama will need the help of the 111th Congress. For its part, Congress is chafing at the bit to reassert its power after being seen as a rubber stamp for the Bush Administration for six of the last eight years and then sold a bill of goods in the hollow promises of the TARP legislation in the final days of the Bush term. Democratic Congressmen and Senators threatened to hold up the second $350 billion TARP funds over the lack of accountability, transparency and focus on the travails of ordinary Americans. The then President-elect Obama had to hint at an early administration veto of any bill obstructing the use of the funds and promising up to $100 billion of the remaining funds would be spent on tackling the US home mortgage crisis. The Democrats in Congress need to realize that their star is now hitched to the Obama Administration and they sink or swim with his program. There is an election in two years and they need to make it work.

As for the Republicans, they cannot be seen as obstructionists, at least not at this point. While Obama received 53% of the popular vote, he won overwhelmingly in the electoral vote and took the youth vote at an amazingly high percentage. This is a real message for the future of the Republican Party. President Obama, due to his good middle of the road choices for his administration, goes into office with a high approval rate and the best wishes of the nation. A lot of people want him to succeed. If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (America’s new Dr. No), House Minority Leader John Boehner and a few radical Republican leaders want to try and obstruct the Obama plan, and use antiquated Senate rules such as filibusters to stop the new administration’s emergency plans for America, they may find themselves in a lesser role two years from now than they are today. Their best plan would be to work across the aisle, work to rebuild America and people’s confidence in government, and help rebuild their party in a moderate, less divisive fashion.

The American people are tired of divisive politics. Congress is a Latin word meaning “come together” and the American people are expecting the Congress and President to come together and work to help America get on the right course. Perhaps the Obama team can work across the aisle, assemble the best minds from the right and left, and make America work again. But to do so, all Americans, especially our politicians, need to lower their voices and listen and work together. America hopes this team can pull it off.