Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration was certainly an event executed in epic scope. But perhaps even more impressive than the ceremony’s symbolic value are the harrowing expectations and responsibilities that now hang upon the shoulders of our new commander in chief.
As president, Obama must not only announce his priorities and projects for the coming term, but also make the public aware of the campaign promises and projects that must either be sacrificed or delayed given the state of the nation today.
With an economy in shambles, the Middle East in the grips of war, American military involvement Obama has pledged to scale back, and failing educational and health care systems domestically, Obama must adopt an attitude of ambitious practicality.
In doing so, he can not only manage expectations and disappointment, but he must also lend a sense of presidential calmness to a nation pushed to a frenetic anxiety by a sea of mostly bad news for America.
On the president’s transition team’s Web site, no less than 24 items are listed as a part of the 44th president’s “agenda.” The following list is submitted as an evaluation of America’s situation today and a suggested flowchart of presidential attention:
1 and 2. Economy and national security (tie): The economy demands swift action and a strong message of budgetary discipline and corporate responsibility, and our national security interests require a consistent vigilance, increased and more equitable diplomacy, and tempered but real military involvement.
President Obama must see our domestic economy and the global threat of violence as a single priority of the highest degree. There is no other way to move forward; heavily attending to only one of these demands would prove fatal, literally and financially.
3. Federal programs (health care and Social Security): As a symbol of a new era in politics, the president has a higher level of responsibility to care for future generations of Americans than those of the “politics of old.” That Social Security is on the brink of exhaustion and that health care in America leaves millions without insurance is not only a stain on the face of today’s America, but also a disrespect and a harsh message of divestment in our future, in our children. While the economy may not be ripe for universal health care in the short term, the administration must align itself for reform immediately.
4. Education: Without better education, this country will fall from the forefront of every field. Our strong university system will hold us until the above issues can begin to calm, but funding must be diverted to (not from) education immediately.
5. Environment: New technological and environmental initiatives will provide jobs and a new direction for our economy. That this is not one of the top three priorities is not to say the environment is not important, but rather that the environmental situation is a product of centuries, and a few months of war-ending and economy-fixing are warranted.
Clearly Tuesday’s events bore an authentic importance almost above the scope of our immediate understanding. As third-year international development studies student Phil Garrity said, “The only other time that I had the feeling that came with election night and this inauguration ““ the acute sense that I was in fact living history, and thus could not comprehend the magnitude of the moment ““ was on Sept. 11.”
These events are of the same vein because both signaled paradigm shifts in the American consciousness: the Sept. 11 attacks entering America into a war against fear and a new awareness of the fallibility of our security, the election ending an era of limited dreams and potentials ““ and perhaps the beginning of a new covenant with the ideals our Founding Fathers reached for, but fell short of.
This week, we again reach past what we as a nation had presumed to be unfortunate facts (“A black man will never be president.”) toward something greater. In this spirit, we must hope our president’s first term supplies America with a renewed prosperity as well.
E-mail Makarechi at kmakarechi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.