Obama on the Precipice: The Ten Worst Things He Could Do When He Takes Over

By Don Hazen and Jan Frel and Joshua Holland and Liliana Segura and Tara Lohan and Heather Gehlert, AlterNet. Posted January 17, 2009.

As Inauguration Day approaches, the citizens of this country are on the edge of their collective seats waiting to see who the real Barack Obama is, and how he will step up to address the worst economic crisis since the Depression. Adding to his burden, Obama is following George W. Bush, who may go down as the most failed and destructive president in history.

As a result, in addition to the financial disaster, Obama inherits two wars and a huge array of counterproductive policies perpetuated by conservatives over the past eight years, many of which are making the resolution of our current problems far more daunting. Obama may very well be facing the most difficult challenges any new president in history has ever faced upon taking office. By any measure, he has an incredibly difficult task. 

Obama moves into the White House as a brilliant, attractive and popular figure, with enormous good will across the globe. But he immediately steps into a maelstrom of crises that have no clear solution, nor an obvious blueprint.

As the economy spirals downward, more people have become jobless in the past three months than have in 38 years, and many millions more Americans are losing their health care -- more than 50 million now. Simultaneously, many states are on the verge of bankruptcy as services in every sector rapidly deteriorate, and businesses across the board suffer setbacks and make layoffs. And every day of decline has the effect of less tax revenue and resources for services and governing, adding to the vicious cycle.

What should, and what will, Obama do? And how could he screw it up, given the fact that pretty much everything is riding on him getting things right the first time in the early stages of his administration? As we all wait to see what happens, there is no question that Obama, at least in terms of getting elected, has been a brilliant politician.

His election to the White House as a young upstart, half-white, half African, one-term senator from Illinois is probably the single most impressive electoral accomplishment in the past 100 years. But the big question on the table is how Obama translates his prodigious skills as a communicator, and his powerful mandate, into a governing strategy that can tackle the gargantuan problems on his plate?  

The Potential Perils of Post-Partisanship 

Obama's well-known and articulated penchant for post-partisanship and compromise, and the signals emerging from his team, suggest he is trying to thread the needle and find just the right combination to balance the political situation and keep everyone on his side. He and is team are also famous for saying, in their self-appointed "pragmatic," post-ideological way, that they only want to do what works.

But therein lies a massive contradiction in the Obama approach. Politico has reported that Obama wants 80 votes in the Senate in favor of his stimulus package, which means a good number of Republicans and the "Blue Dog" business-supporting Democrats voting aye. How many compromises for political expediency will need to be made to produce those votes, and will the expediency come at a cost of what works?

In terms of some of the specifics of the plan that have surfaced, it will contain somewhere in the vicinity of 40 percent in tax cuts. Are large tax cuts doing what works, or are they what will be attractive to the conservatives? As Bob Borosage of the Campaign for America's Future underscores, "tax cuts come in a distant second to public investment in actually creating jobs."

And even though some of the tax cuts will go to a tax credit for low- and middle-income people, it seems pretty clear that with losses in housing values, debt hanging over their heads and retirement accounts ransacked, people will not be spending any small amount of money they might pocket.

And as much as $150 billion will go to business, including the Republicans' desire to allow businesses to write off current losses retroactively against taxes paid on profits over the past five years. Not a recipe for success. 

Centrism Is for Phonies

Politics is almost always about ideology and partisanship as most understand despite Obama's insistence that he prefers to do it otherwise.  But for most, post-partisanship is really another word for "centrism," a theme that has been a centerpiece of inaugural addresses for more than 150 years, Mark Leibovich explained in last Sunday's New York Times. It is standard, rather predictable fare for emerging political figures to bemoan the extremes of both parties and the divisive politics of previous regimes. 

Tom Frank rails in the Wall Street Journal, "There is no branch of American political expression more trite, more smug, more hollow than centrism," which seems to find its most enthusiastic audience inside the Beltway and in the American media.  "[W]hat the Beltway centrist characteristically longs for is not so much to transcend politics but to close off debate on the grounds that he -- and the vast silent middle for which he stands -- knows beyond question what is to be done," Frank says.

See more stories tagged with: iraq, immigration, water, obama, health care, afghanistan, civil liberties, war on drugs, stimulus, mistakes

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet. Jan Frel, Senior Managing Editor; Heather Gehlert, Managing Editor; Josh Holland, senior writer; Tara Lohan, Envionment editor and Liliana Segura is Rights and Liberties Editor.

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