It goes without saying that President-elect Barack Obama presents a welcome challenge to the status quo, and the mandate, if he has one, is to follow up with some change. After soundly beating a GOP effort that can be best described as incompetent, he now has in place a Congress that can work with him to move legislation forward in a manner that begins to reverse existing trends little by little. He should not assume his win is a mandate for radical social change, given the numbers of Republican, conservative, and independent voters who decided to support him out of the fear that doing nothing new would represent a continued fall in the American way of life. Obama has to hang his effforts on a few clear and broadly popular themes, dividing his goals between satisfying the left, his own ambition, and the needs of the population at large.
The newspapers are already reporting his desire to examine some 200 Bush executive orders, and while this is always a good start for some quick and easy change, it is the type of change that can easily be reversed, or lead to partisan meandering. Thus it is important for him to move immediately on major issues. We've always thought it best, both in terms of legacy and the good of the country, for a president to have as a goal reform of one of the big areas of government endeavor, whether healthcare reform, tax changes, or adjustments to social security and medicare. Should Obama manage to handle one of these areas, while also stabilizing the financial system, that in itself will be a worthy legacy.
When he looks in the mirror each day, he should be asking himself what he can do to improve the daily life of each American, beginning with those who did not support him. Such an approach will keep his effort broad enough to impact every corner of life without side ventures into the type of social policy and experimentation that will cause a reversal of support.
In many ways this election represented the triumph of sound judgement over ideology. The type of demagoguery employed by John McCain in this campaign, and the ability of conservative and often Christian voters to support him, created a level of cognitive disonnance that was astounding. One can hardly hold the Bible in one portion of the brain, with ideas like "not bearing false witness," while supporting the type of campaign that McCain chose to run. Fortunately just enough people, yet barely enough, could not live with the idea of holding reality at bay in order to accept the work of negative art that McCain was painting. And now the Republicans are scratching their heads, and rethinking their direction. The Miami Herald suggests that they are battling between returning to some sort of Reagan inspired ideal, or looking forward and trying to broaden their appeal. Whichever method is chosen, race baiting, negative appeals and subtle mind and image tricks should be kept to a minimum.
Hopefully they will come to the conclusion that you can win elections by presenting powerful ideas that address the issues at hand that affect people across lines of sex, race and color. Obama made that appeal this time around. While the United States and the world, from Iceland to Brazil to Germany to England were falling apart, Obama was focused on the issues of relevance, while McCain was focused on distorting the personal character of his opponent. While Obama was presenting ideas (however pie in the sky they might prove to be, given our economic condition), McCain was appealing to people's fears with falsities of elaborate construction. Further, and a slight majority of people realized this, McCain's chief assessment of the threats to the country centered on terrorism. This, while the enemy--economic retardation--was inside the house wreaking havoc.
Thus, we welcome the change that Obama represents. Aside from the actual issues of running the country, it also gives us a long overdue reinforcement of the idea that America is the land of opportunity for all, regardless of who you are, or how you got here.
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