It was wonderful to see the people cheering throughout the night of November 4th. Many will define this date as the day that brought change, change being the main slogan of president-elect Barack Obama. After a hard-fought campaign it is time for America to unite and start working on its problems in a bipartisan spirit.
Sen. McCain said in his concession speech that he would not spend a minute regretting the campaign, as there are more important issues at stake – America’s future. That is absolutely true and one has to forget about the campaign, as it is time for America to heal its wounds and start working on its problems. And the road ahead is rather bumpy.
What are the challenges that Barack Obama will have to face after January 20th, when he officially becomes President of the United States? There is a lot of them – dealing with the economy crisis; restoring America’s image throughout the world; managing relations with foreign policy actors, who are becoming increasingly hostile. All of this needs to be wrapped in a "change“ package. People will not forget Obama’s slogans and the hope he gave them, therefore the new president will have a lot of expectations management to deal with. Yet, foremost, it seems that the most pressing issue at the moment is unting all Americans and truly working in a spirit of bipartisanship.
“I will be your President, too.” With these words President-Elect Barack Obama addressed in his victory speech the people who cast their vote for a different candidate. Throughout his campaign “change” and “hope” were parallel to the ideas of bipartisanship. The campaign’s message was very often close to “Washington in broken, those people are fighting each other, Barack Obama will unite them”. It is true to say that Washington’s politics is very partisan – with a two-party system it is hard to see any other alternative. Hovering around this system and having two parties - one, which needs to reinvent itself and one which might take advantage of the other’s weakness - Mr. Obama will have to be a very fair judge and will have to stick to the principle of bipartisanship even stronger.
But if he succeeds it will truly be change that he brings to Washington. With two parties working together it will not be very difficult to convince the people to unite. And even though Mr. Obama might have a problem with managing expectations, which are unusually high, it will not be hard to look better than his predecessor. Although he ran a particularly idealistic campaign his record shows that he is a very pragmatic politician coming from the hard-reality of Chicago politics. With that in mind one can hope that the next President knew what he was doing during the campaign. As an educated person he also knows that social unrest usually starts when you give people hope and suddenly take it back.
It is also important to remember that Mr. Obama is not a one-man army in the huge Washington apparatus. The upcoming few weeks are more important for America than the last two years of campaigning because they will determine who will deal with both internal and foreign policy. Dealing with the economy crisis and restoring America’s image in the world were two important issues debated throughout the campaign, therefore the Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of State will be positions of high importance. We can expect very clever choices in these positions, maybe even choices from the other party.
The day after Election Day was one when Americans woke up to a new world. This is both fortunate and unfortunate – Europe seemed friendlier as if a magical wand made them like America within hours. Hopefully this situation won’t go away as easily as it came. It would be great if America would have an ally in Europe because many will try to take advantage of a President who was described as “weak” during the campaign. A few hours after the elections Iran reminded the Americans to respect their borders and not to fly any aircrafts above their airspace. The Russian President made an aggressive speech in which he assured the world that Russia will not move out from Caucasus and will respond to the American missile shield with appropriate measures. The North Korean President made an outlook of the military. Mr. Obama will clearly have a lot of hostility on part of those countries.
But, as the elections have shown, Americans have a more pressing issue at mind right now. With the Dow Jones taking a ride on the roller coaster and economists forecasting a recession for the third quarter of 2009 the Obama administration will have to make wise choices for the economy. Wise choices are usually about taking a long-term stance and accepting the short-term consequences. If he really wants to cure the economy some very unpopular decisions will have to be made. And forget about cutting taxes – not only the deficit needs to be taken care of, but also the money has to flow to cover for all the social policies Mr. Obama will want to introduce. Among them is the ticking time bomb of rising health care costs. From a more practical point of view it is hopeful to say that the Obama administration will not have to deal with hard political realities – both the House and the Senate have a clear Democrat majority and the Democrats are very close to having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate which will allow them to pass pretty much any legislation coming from the Oval Office.
So far, so good. In the first few days of being the president-elect Mr. Obama made an interesting choice for his Chief of Staff, launched a webpage called change.gov and talked to President Bush about making the transition as smooth as possible. We can expect a lot of Internet usage by the administration and amazing speeches from the President. The upcoming months will show if it’s not only words that Mr. Obama deals with handily. During his first press conference he joked that the most important and immediate issue right now is choosing the right puppy for his daughters. Let us hope this will be the most difficult of his challenges.
