killer buffalo

Among other things, President Bush is generally blamed for widening America’s national debt and trade deficits, sending America to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, politicizing its Justice Department, violating its Constitution, and shattering the central power of its Republican Party.  And all over the course of eight years.  In half that time, President-elect Obama will have the potential to do quite a bit—withdraw American troops from the combat in the Middle East and overhaul the federal tax system—but regardless of his current popularity, there is quite a bit he will likely fail or neglect to do—namely finding a long term solution to rising health care costs and bringing the social security system back into solvency.

For Democrats, President-elect Obama has become synonymous with “political change,” particularly in Washington.  For Republicans, his name often conjures a sense of failure—as if such a liberal president were the creation of the failed ideologies of Mr.  Bush; progressive or regressive, Mr. Obama’s distinct liberalism will face success or failure in the New Year.

As December brought the announcement by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that the American economy is in recession, Mr. Obama’s advisory team ought to have been pleased: any current economic downturn is likely to reverse itself sometime over the next four years, and warranted or not, Mr. Obama’s tax policies, renovation of the public works system, and Keynesian deficit spending will be credited.

That being said, Mr. Obama will not be able to reverse longstanding budget and trade deficits despite what he had suggested in three presidential debates with Mr. McCain.  The extenuating circumstances of economic contraction, however, will excuse Mr. Obama from all but the most critical voters.

Mr. Obama’s so-called “universal” health care mandate will not be met with the same nearly universal approval.  Functioning more as a national health care mandate—in which possible increased taxes are leveraged to pay for the currently uninsured—Mr. Obama’s health insurance policy has already found itself critics—both on the Democratic side, who claim it does not go far enough to ensure equality in care, and on the Republican side, who claim it will drive up federal income taxes and medical costs eventually leaving more Americans unemployed.

Withdrawing American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan over the next fourteen months will be a difficult if not impossible task.  Mr. Obama has already begun adjusting unrealistic timelines for a complete end to American occupation of Iraq, though the United Nations (UN) Security Council could ban American troops from the country sooner.

In the meantime, Mr. Obama will need to rely on rousing optimism to extricate himself from harsh realities: that a balanced budget, promises on tax reductions, and national health care are mutually exclusive.  His oratory may thus prove more valuable as a presidential resource than as a characteristic of a candidate.  If not, Vice-President-elect Biden’s rhetoric will be a crude alternative.  So let Mr. Obama knock glasses with his wife; popularity, like politics, is a fickle game.

-David Lamb and Nicole Adams

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