America Needs a Breakthrough

Obama has become the president. Something that seemed impossible a while ago is now a fact. However impressive his victory might have been, the difficulty scale of the task that the president elect will have to deal with is totally incomparable to the one that Obama faced as a senator.

Obama needs to face challenges that are far greater than those that any of the U.S. presidents have had to face within the last few decades. After winning the presidency, Richard Nixon had only war in Vietnam on his hands. Jimmy Carter had to get America out of the moral collapse; Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, had to get his country out of the financial crisis.

Obama will have not one, but two wars on his hands. The financial crisis might be might be soon be bigger than the one from the late 70’s. He will have to deal with as strong a sense that America is getting weaker as in the 70’s. In addition, he will have to face the task of rebuilding the prestige and reputation of the USA that was destroyed during the last eight years of Bush’s presidency.

Obama has got a lot of trust from Americans as well as the rest of the world, especially Europe, which is expressing its good will and sympathy towards the president elect. But the higher the bar of expectations is, the bigger the danger of disappointment and frustration both in America and elsewhere.

Obama has shown within the twenty-one months of his campaign that he has great potential, allowing him to face challenges and successfully withstand this difficult test. Because of the high expectations of Obama, his failure would be much more painful than that of McCain’s if he were to face the same challenges.

With his intellect, Barrack Obama perhaps surpasses ten of his predecessors, but one cannot forget that he is the least experienced candidate to hold the presidential office within the last hundred years. He has never managed anything or supervised a big group of people. A few years in the Senate is definitely something, but this experience in comparison with managing a huge bureaucratic machine and above all leading the most powerful country in the world means very little.

What makes Obama’s task even more difficult is the fact that he does not have any cheat sheets. None of the previous presidents have faced such a complicated international and domestic situation.

The world, which is clearly visible, is indeed, as Fareed Zakhaira put it, in the post-American era. It does not mean that the American empire has collapsed. It means that, to quote Dominique Moisi from his latest article in Foreign Affairs, the USA is not the center of the world anymore.

There are many centers, and this situation, as Robert Kagan put it, resembles more the one from the end of the nineteenth century than the cold war and the post-war era. There is no match going on between America and Russia anymore, whose outcome was easy to predict despite all the dramatics of that confrontation. The domination of the USA that we still experienced a decade ago is gone and will never happen again.

On the one hand, the center of gravity of the world’s politics and economy has drifted toward Asia, which can be evident in the unbelievable expansion of China, with India being not that far behind it. On the other hand, Russia, Iran and Venezuela are getting more and more assertive due to their natural resources. There is also the still strong influence of Islamic extremism with headache-inducing challenges that Obama would face on the part of Afghanistan and Pakistan. On top of it, there is the financial crisis that has not revealed all of its possibilities and especially its consequences.

To bring this situation under control is a big problem in itself. Finding a strategy that would allow dealing with each of those challenges separately and simultaneously poses a colossal problem. And let’s be honest, the world is schizophrenic in its approach towards America. It usually cannot do without American leadership, but does not like when that leadership is executed. It does not like American hard power, but tries to seize the opportunity of the USA being weak when that power is too soft. Besides, there are a lot of countries that simply want America to be the weakest, preferably helpless, country.

Thus Obama will have to maneuver in such a way as to express his will to work on the international arena without being tied by its inner net. While dealing with his allies, he cannot forget that the American interest should be the only, but also the most important motive of his actions. He has to, using Theodore Roosevelt’s words, speak softly and carry a big stick. Some countries that have great hopes for Obama’s presidency will probably be disappointed soon.

The most important objectives of President Obama will be recreating a national goal that can unite all Americans and rebuild the reputation of the USA. And maybe more-the rebuilding of America’s image as a country of hope and a symbol of openness and freedom, and not as a place of oppression, which instead of inspiring, scares and irritates other nations.

The task is extremely difficult, but Obama has a chance of completing it. Just as his victory serves as evidence that America is a country of countless possibilities, his presidency has to prove that it might open new possibilities for the entire world.

The range of possibilities that the new president will face will be as big as the range of dangers. It is hard to predict now whether his presidency will open a new era in the world of politics or whether it will be an unsuccessful experiment. One does not know whether Obama will be able to redefine American politics and co-define world politics or not.

Today it seems that soon Obama will tightly hold the reins with the retreat of Republicans. However, it is worth remembering here that as early as two years after Bill Clinton’s presidential triumph, America experienced the big revolution of Republicans while Democrats lost Congress.

Another Democratic president, Jimmy Carter conquered the White House due to people’s big hopes only to be ruthlessly voted out by Americans four years later. Four years ago, after George W. Bush’s second victory and the GOP’s big triumph in the congressional elections, Republicans argued that they had a patent on how to have a majority in the Electoral College and hold the power for over ten years. We can see now what is left of those dreams.

Eight years after Bush’s victory in the dramatic confrontation with Al Gore, the latter won the Noble prize, whereas the former has a reputation comparable to that of Nixon, who after being humiliated and forced to resign left the White House.

The symbols of Bush’s presidency were supposed to include compassionate conservatism and then a fight against terrorism. We have to give Bush credit, as America has not been attacked at all since September 11. However, the symbols of Bush’s presidency will probably be the Abu Ghraib prison and the Wall Street crash that also contributed to John McCain’s failure.

Thus, Bush’s conservatism has turned out to be the most compassionate towards the big sharks from Wall Street rather than ordinary citizens from Main Street. Obama, however, has to be careful with his redistributed model of governing America. Even though the USA is fed up with wild capitalism, it might pay a bigger price for theoretically refined socialism.

Obama led his campaign under the slogan of change and won. However, what America needs is not a change, but a breakthrough. It is relatively easy to outline what that breakthrough should entail, but much more difficult to make it happen. Today, regardless of fears, Obama is a symbol of hope for America. It is not an easy hope. However, despite being difficult, it is realistic. We should wish for America and its new president that this new hope is fulfilled.