29 December 2010
Obama Begins
In the December 28, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami comes to the sensible realization that after a year of groping in the contentious atmosphere of Washington Barack Obama finally has found his footing to manipulate the framework of the federal government in order to achieve some of what he was elected to do. His assumption of the Presidency inspired a lot of hope around the country as well as around the world. Perhaps he and his aides were dazed by this reception, and fooled into the belief that governing would be easy now that the campaigning was over. However, it turned out to be exactly the opposite.
What a student of domestic and world history like Mr. Ajami should recognize is that even the most effective political leaders often mistake their success in reaching the seat of power for a promise of easy riding from then on. For example, Franklin Roosevelt got his second-year comeuppance from the Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln took a year and a half to find a general who could convert his vision of Union inexorableness into battlefield dominance.
Obama’s opposition in Congress believed that it could pander to the concerns of America’s middle class about overwhelming government debt by mandating tax reductions. Their strategy apparently was to force the other party to reduce spending on entitlements and avoid having to take that step themselves. Ironically, they won majority control of one house of Congress and will have to whittle the large government health and retirement benefits programs themselves.
The President will show his mettle by managing the necessary culling of those programs in a way that makes clear to the public that refusing to pay the piper inevitably sends home the band. He has taken the first step by accepting extension of the Bush tax cuts. Now he must help shape the resizing of government so as to fairly distribute the disappearance of some of its largesse.
In the December 28, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami comes to the sensible realization that after a year of groping in the contentious atmosphere of Washington Barack Obama finally has found his footing to manipulate the framework of the federal government in order to achieve some of what he was elected to do. His assumption of the Presidency inspired a lot of hope around the country as well as around the world. Perhaps he and his aides were dazed by this reception, and fooled into the belief that governing would be easy now that the campaigning was over. However, it turned out to be exactly the opposite.
What a student of domestic and world history like Mr. Ajami should recognize is that even the most effective political leaders often mistake their success in reaching the seat of power for a promise of easy riding from then on. For example, Franklin Roosevelt got his second-year comeuppance from the Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln took a year and a half to find a general who could convert his vision of Union inexorableness into battlefield dominance.
Obama’s opposition in Congress believed that it could pander to the concerns of America’s middle class about overwhelming government debt by mandating tax reductions. Their strategy apparently was to force the other party to reduce spending on entitlements and avoid having to take that step themselves. Ironically, they won majority control of one house of Congress and will have to whittle the large government health and retirement benefits programs themselves.
The President will show his mettle by managing the necessary culling of those programs in a way that makes clear to the public that refusing to pay the piper inevitably sends home the band. He has taken the first step by accepting extension of the Bush tax cuts. Now he must help shape the resizing of government so as to fairly distribute the disappearance of some of its largesse.
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