[Marxism] Unrealistic hopes

[Louis Proyect]

The Times (London), October 31, 2008 Friday
Don't want to rain on your parade, but this won't be easy, says Obama
by Tim Reid, Washington

Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower 
expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid 
concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring 
unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful 
recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring 
people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric 
and promises of "hope" and "change" are now confronted with the 
reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the 
transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so 
there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair".

The aide said that Mr Obama himself was the first to realise that 
expectations risked being inflated.

In an interview with a Colorado radio station, Mr Obama appeared to 
be engaged already in expectation lowering. Asked about his goals for 
the first hundred days, he said he would need more time to tackle 
such big and costly issues as health care reform, global warming and 
Iraq. "The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's 
probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the 
difference," he said. He has also been reminding crowds in recent 
days how "hard" it will be to achieve his goals, and that it will take time.

"I won't stand here and pretend that any of this will be easy - 
especially now," Mr Obama told a rally in Sarasota, Florida, 
yesterday, citing "the cost of this economic crisis, and the cost of 
the war in Iraq". Mr Obama's transition team is headed by John 
Podesta, a Washington veteran and a former chief-of-staff to Bill 
Clinton. He has spent months overseeing a virtual Democratic 
government-in-exile to plan a smooth transition should Mr Obama 
emerge victorious next week. The plans are so far advanced that an 
Obama cabinet has been largely decided upon, with the expectation 
that most of his senior appointments could be announced shortly after 
election day.

Yet Mr Obama and his aides are under no illusions about the size of 
the challenges the Democrat will inherit if he enters the Oval 
Office. Tom Daschle, the party's former leader in the US Senate and a 
strong contender for the post of White House chief-of-staff in an 
Obama administration, said last month that the winner next week would 
have only a 50 per cent chance of winning a second term in 2012.

Not only will the next president take office with the country sliding 
into a potentially long recession - and mired in debt - but the 
challenges abroad are immense. There is an unfinished war in Iraq, a 
worsening situation in Afghanistan and an unstable and nuclear-armed 
Pakistan to contend with. Iran appears intent on acquiring the bomb 
and there remains the ever-present threat from al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists.

If he wins, Mr Obama will inherit a Democratic-controlled Congress, 
and might even have the benefit of a 60-seat filibuster-proof 
"supermajority" in the Senate. Such a scenario would allow him to 
push through legislation largely unfettered by Republican opposition. 
Yet it also means that should the country still be mired in recession 
in three years' time, voters - who have short memories - will 
probably blame him and the Democrats on Capitol Hill. Those stakes 
have led Mr Obama to conclude that while expectations need to be 
tempered, big things need to be achieved very early in his first 
term, when he will still have the political capital to achieve some 
of his most ambitious legislative goals.

Having promised "real" change, the pressure will be on him to 
deliver. In the Colorado interview, Mr Obama added: "The next 
president has got to come quickly out of the box."

The early priorities being lined up if he takes power are a mixture 
of symbolism and substance. He plans to make a major address in a big 
Muslim country early in his first term. Having pledged on the 
campaign trail to close Guantanamo Bay, he is also determined to make 
early moves to rid America of the controversial prison. Yet what to 
do with the remaining inmates looms as an intractable problem, as 
many of their home governments refuse to allow them to return.

Mr Obama's first legislative goals will be to follow through on his 
pledge to cut taxes for the middle class and raise them for the 
wealthiest Americans, and to push through a hugely expensive Bill to 
provide near-universal health insurance.