What Awaits the New President

After a decade of focusing on foreign politics, Barack Obama, the new strong man in the White House, must handle several domestic challenges.

In 1932, the new president Franklin Roosevelt had to undertake the following tasks: regulate the financial markets, create jobs, lower taxes, wage and labor legislation and provide guarantees for the mortgage market. Therefore, “ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.” In order to see this through, Roosevelt then demanded in his inaugural speech that “for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

Was this a glimpse into the unknown future? The successor of George W. Bush must focus on nearly the same themes, and just like at that time the guiding principle could be “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoned, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Three Large Domestic Policy Challenges

Today in domestic politics there are three large challenges: the containment of the financial crisis, the reform of the welfare state and the general overhaul of the infrastructure to include environmentally-friendly measures. All three areas cost a lot of money. The budgetary situation is so strained after the stimulus package, that the new president must decide right away which of the three tasks must be delayed. This fight will shape the first half of 2009. A strong current among the Democrats wants to tackle climate change, while another equally strong current among the Republicans wants to focus on the U.S.’s energy independence. An even stronger current in both parties wants a national health insurance plan, Democrats somewhat more than the Republicans. And all politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, immediately want to save the credit and housing markets. The latter will be the first priority to the detriment of climate change and perhaps even health insurance.

This is because the American definition’s of social security is in terms of individual, instead of governmental assets, and also over homeowners payments. This definition is the result of American history. It was therefore a strong driving force in both parties for the management of cheap credit.

In Conquered Freedom to Stand on One’s Own Feet

The democratic immigrant society, in the positive and negative sense, is characterized by loners and individualists who lack the communal social identity to fight against rule from above. Since the Middle Ages, Europe has been accustomed to seeing social policy as the political gain of freedom of social groups and classes. Until 1945, this fight was one for freedom and for the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) until 1989; autonomy in bargaining, with it the trade unions have in Germany a constitutional status.

America has never experienced an absolutist monarchy or dictatorship. Since 1776, the overwhelming majority has never occupied itself with gaining gradual freedoms in the nation. It went about in conquered freedom to stand on one’s own feet and that means gaining property. The dominant social ambition was the ownership of a farm or of one’s own house; the defining fault line was slavery. Its overcoming, next to civil rights, was short and concise: the acquisition of property by blacks.

Defending the “Basis of the American Dream¨

The Democrats found that in 1979 blacks thereby had made little progress, and obligated the national mortgage banks to invest a part of the profits into cheap credit for minorities. One of Bill Clinton’s first measures in 1993 was to intensify the law. The Republicans were worried after 2001 over the growing imbalance. Simultaneously, George W. Bush referred to the high residential property ratio of minorities.

The mortgage crisis hit America not just economically, but also mentally like in 1932. Whoever America leaves in the lurch, especially a black president in the next Congressional elections in 2010 will experience its blue miracle. One can count on the fact that Bush’s successor will have to actually put many levers into motion to defend the ¨basis of the American Dream¨.

Do Not Push Health Insurance onto the Back Burner

Because of this, health insurance cannot be pushed onto the back burner. Both parties have made a lot of fuss about it, the Democrats more so than the Republicans. According to his estimates, Barack Obama’s health insurance reform should cost fifty to 65 billion dollars, financed through moderate tax increases for the wealthy. After the financial debacle, there are 700 billion dollars missing. Obama has announced that he will go over all expenses with a fine toothed comb. One can assume that the health insurance reform will not be cut, but other things will.

Obama names the war costs in Iraq. Their withdrawal will not suffice. For the first time since the time of Roosevelt, there will be a condition in which it states: a better health insurance plan or a newer aircraft carrier.

Under Roosevelt, the tendency of the population was to be militantly isolationist in the economic crisis. In the Democratic Party today, isolationism is latently available, tied to the latent protectionism Franklin Roosevelt fought against from the beginning, because he had regarded Hitler as a potential opponent since 1933. Roosevelt, however, had to make concessions to the spirit of the times and to the financial obligations of the crisis.

Considering Realities

George W. Bush’s successor will make no concessions when it comes to the fight against al-Qaeda. On the other hand, there are realities that must be considered. It does not look that in the fall of Iran, the Middle East, Pakistan, China, North Korea, or climate change that Europe can take over the gentler diplomatic part and otherwise trust that America will unconditionally accept the cost-effective ideas of the Old World. Bush’s split with the transatlantic community was no faux pas. America had found its way back to its founding solitary impulse with the end of the Cold War, the rise of Asia and its attack on the corrupted wing of Islam. Under his successor, the impulse will possibly get its shape: one less aircraft carrier, one more welfare program.

This has consequences for the European worldview. Europe, not least also Germany, has in the last twenty years led a foreign policy of boiling instability. In 1988, one was for the recognition of the GDR, in 1990 for its reintegration. In 1991, Yugoslavia was decisively destroyed while Washington asked to be left out of the conflict, in 1995 it desperately asked for U.S. hands for help. In 1999, Europe emphatically wanted a war against Serbia with a U.N. Mandate, but in 2002 they expressly insisted on a U.N. mandate against Saddam. Simultaneously, Berlin declared that if the U.N. mandate decided on war, they would ignore it. Only months later did Berlin’s closest partner in Paris menaced out of nowhere with its nuclear weapons initiative against terrorists and their supporters. Russia was once a flawless democracy within a few years, then a dangerous major power. China was currying favors when suddenly out of nowhere the Dalai Lama was received in the office of the Chancellor.

Creating a New Platform Together with Europe Again

Under this track Europe was an instinctively euro-centrist, even euro-egotistical power after the end of the Cold War. If the core E.U. powers felt their interests were being threatened, then the U.N. Security Council resolution was only a piece of paper. If they saw only the interests of their ally the U.S.A. threatened, they maintained that they would support America, standing aside or throwing a club between Washington’s legs so that a U.N. Security Council resolution was elevated to biblical status.

Europe was no less erratic and egotistical as the Europeans blamed George W. Bush– it was only for a longer timeframe in Europe than in the U.S.A. For a working New World Order under Bush’s successor, the most important thing is that they include the core E.U. powers in thinking unpredictable situations through, not just making U.S. interests the benchmark for all things. The perpetual fight over influence and majorities in the European council entices one in the European labor market to proliferate through foreign policy actions. This is obviously visible in many conflicts with Washington.

Bush’s successor has, however, clear domestic policy priorities and with those concurrently outlined clear foreign policy preferences. It will not simply go back into a convoy whose tempo and goals are given by Europe. To a new realization on both sides of the Atlantic belongs the recognition that the European states will defend legitimate principle interests which do not always agree with American reasoning. In addition, he must recognize that the phrase “Who is not for us is against us,” used since Ronald Reagan’s time but especially by George W. Bush, will represent nearly just as large panache in Europeans. The job of the successor is then, together with Europe, to create another common platform. Whether it comes together or not hangs on the solution of as good as all conflicts – from the Middle East on Iran and Pakistan up to climate change and the new world financial order.

Franklin Roosevelt would, after overcoming the Great Depression, become the father of the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations. He became that because he placed the interests of his own country only to a certain degree above the interests of other countries. If Europe is hoping for something similar from Bush’s successor without also setting European egoism aside, it will miss a great opportunity.