Commentary: The next four years of President Obama through the lens of his first one hundred days
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| Published on Saturday, May 9, 2009 |
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By Jean H Charles
In a column, titled: “Have no fear America!” written at the beginning of the Obama regime, I advised the doubters of his ability, including my own two sisters, to wait for the first one hundred days before making an opinion on the direction of the politics of the new government. It is now time after three months of the Obama regime to take a look back and make some predictions on what the next four years will bring about?
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| Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to building a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol. |
Like a jet taking off under strain, the administration has ignited all its engines to try for a comfortable cruising altitude. However, while doing so, all types of new and difficult situations have tried to put a drag on Obama’s thrust: the swine flu, the debacle of the auto industry, the pirates of Somalia, the recession, devising an acceptable package for the stimulus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and on and on and on …
Barack Obama looks cool and calm while piloting the plane to that desired cruising level; one where he can tell the people of America to sit down, relax and enjoy the cruise. I have always believed that the true test of a good government is the tempo of the first one hundred days. If ignition engages all its power successfully, we are in for a trip that will be as historic as it will be pleasant.
Any comparison between a government and an airplane in flight must be very clear about both take off and touchdown. At the beginning, the government must further energize its fans, and have a positive impact on the doubters, binding both into the new form of governance. At the beginning of the new regime, it must prepare to so secure the future, that any new, needed and fundamental policies of the new administration will not be dismantled by the next president.
Within these three months of the hundred days, the Obama regime has more than passed the test of due diligence according to most of the political pundits. For example, in his visits to Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean, the president of the United States is no longer seen as being the international pariah and excoriated as the criminal American whose choices were limited to either staying home, or when abroad, travel as far from the massing crowds only under heavy security; or otherwise be able to duck quickly from flying shoes!
Obama and his wife, Michelle, are by comparison now celebrities who set the stage by which to be admired and emulated; and that ranges from the handshake to the beaver-crowned guard in front of 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister’s residence, to the elegant but discreet style of Michelle. Without a doubt, the new America and its President and First Lady, are now the trendsetters at its best.
Barack Obama is following a long list of leaders who excel on the task: Hannibal, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela, among others. He is emerging as another of those foreordained leaders who could assist in making America and the rest of the world a better environment for all. We have seen the same pattern of elevation in the arts and in the arena of sports when the door has been opened for minority members to come in. These included Jacky Robinson, Mohammed Ali, Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters; people who in their own ways and specialized areas have elevated their games into better opportunities not only for enjoyment, but also for others to dream of, to follow. And to change.
I have conversed with a personal friend of Barack Obama’s mother. The person also hails from Hawaii. She revealed in her observations that the island, her own mother and the school where Obama attended college, all assisted directly and otherwise in his early life and formation of later attitudes. Her observations and as well, this essay is trying to predict the direction in which the Obama government might be going in the next four years.
Speaking of him, the Hawaiian woman restated something the world has come to recognize. It is that the Barack persona is imprinted with, and an expression of the culture of hospitality found in Hawaii; a place where several different ethnic groups have been living harmoniously in a paradise-like setting which, ironically far removed from the continental United States, is still fundamentally American.
Obama is also a product of his mother, a scholar, an anthropologist, a humanist who believed that each human being, including her own son Obama, can reach their fullest potential if only they are properly coached, nurtured and surrounded by the best to offer in education.
Last but not least, President Obama is the product of Columbia University, my own alma mater. The school provides to its students the sense of noblesse oblige as well as the confidence that you gain in education and ultimately in stature when you have sat down at the feet of some of the best luminaries that this world has to offer. It is thus that one can gain needed insights into the intricacies of men and women; of situations and polity.
Located in upper Manhattan, Columbia is an oasis of scholarship, service and personal engagement. Obama left college as a serious scholar and who subsequently attended Harvard. There, he was the first black president of the Student Law Review. His later detour into depressed communities, organizing others to better defend their own interests and communities, further stamped on and in him, a determination and conviction that he could be a change agent for the United States and for the world.
It was this Obama that we saw at his press conference summing up the results of his hundred days. There, as usual, he was cool, well versed in the minutae of governance, the intricacies of financing, and the convolutions of politics, was, all the while, self-possessed, but without being cocky. At this press conference, Obama was continuing to follow a political agenda clearly described and laid down during the earlier election campaign, and showed again, a script well written by him and his advisors, and vetted during the campaign, and voted on by the American electorate.
A student of American History, Barack Obama is following into the pathway of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B Johnson. They have brought sweeping revolutions on the landscape of the American march to greater and greater freedoms in areas as emancipation of African-Americans, the New Deal for all Americans; and civil rights legislation trying once again -- though still unsuccessfully so -- to remove the last vestiges of enslavement and denial of fundamental human rights for all Americans.
Barack Obama, whether or not he wants it so, will more than likely be remembered as the American president who rebuilt the American economic engine, and also placed it on a foundation of solid rock, and not on the quicksand of easy economic gains without regulations and effective oversight.
He has also set himself to overhaul the American foreign policy. His Secretary of Defense and holdover of the Bush Administration needs no convincing to understand that nation-building must be a key ingredient of the new American engagement abroad.
Equally enormous are the national issues. He must here prevent the financial crisis that still threatens, and do so without crashing down. He must launch the alternative energy initiative, convince Congress to pass a universal health care policy, improve education, formulate a new immigration policy, and contain the deficit through a revamped defense budget.
And these are only the beginnings of the challenges facing Obama at home and abroad, period!
The international issues represent the near misses from the old administration. These include: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Israel-Arab conflict, reconciling with Cuba, reassuring Iran and thus deter it from pursuing its nuclear build-up; convince Russia and as well its former satellites of America’s diplomacy, flexible and sturdy; the balance-of-trade deficit with China; the perceived recalcitrance of North Korea; generally repairing the American prestige and credibility abroad; ensuring from itself and from other industrial countries, financial and technical assistance to Africa, Latin America and the failed states of the world: Sudan, Congo, Haiti, Burma, Somalia etc…
To quote a previous essay: America is running on a twenty-year leadership deficit, and President Obama has a lot of catching up to do to bring this nation to an altitude, high enough and trusted and again admired enough to take the leadership by which to effect a real difference in the state of the world. I am confident he will succeed in this time and with these uncertainties as also did his hero, Abraham Lincoln in another time equally trying. Obama is only looking for the proper timing in settling each one of these difficult issues; making use of the wind of good will is on his side; possessing the gravitas of a solid education as well as the moral grounding necessary for good judgment.
I am predicting the next four years will be smooth sailing, but we must first, do a fly-over the Statue of Liberty, and eventually endure and successfully pass through the unpredictable turbulence of the political, economic, and social Bermuda Triangles which threaten Obama’s Air Force One launching into historic flight. Without a doubt, not only does it take a village to make a good child into an heroic adult, but it seems that it also takes the special kind of villages found in a hospitable, self-possessed Hawaii to create an Obama! | | | | Reads : 661 | | | |
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