What a great day for the world! The election of Barack Obama has highlighted, once again, the exceptional nature of America’s cultural, economic, and political systems (see Lipset, De Tocqueville, and Weber).
While many will be celebrating for the foreseeable future, our President-elect is surely hard at work right now – he has already been challenged by Russia, as VP-elect Biden predicted a few weeks back.
The question is: what should an Obama administration do first? What should the first 100 days look like? Any ideas?
November 5th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Energy, energy, energy…. The economy, terrorism, our problems with the middle east, china, russia, ect… they all have to do with energy or rather the lack of diversity in energy production.
Not only should his first 100 days focus on this… this should be the central theme of his entire presidency. I am not going to hold my breath but this should be the new generation’s “mission to the moon”.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Health, energy and climate change, urban policies, multilateralism…are urgent issues and should be at the first positions in the to do list the next years.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
David – Great post. I’m going to write something on urban policy soon. Big issue – will he break with told old-school Democrat best-way, Clinton hold-overs? We’ll soon see …
November 5th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I meant Belt-Way:-)
November 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Amen RS.
Energy is indeed the keystone issue around which everything revolves. You can obviously add issues like food production, poverty and global climate change.
There are obviously other “issues” that will need attention (health care), but not unlike a game of “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” most of these issues can be tied back to energy.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Thanks Richard. The urban agenda is going to be interesting. Remember meeting with Mike Turner, the mod R from Dayton, OH. He had some great thoughts on redefining the idea of Urban Policy — moving it from poverty to growth (in a nutshell)… He won last night and it will be interesting to see if his ideas are ‘welcomed’ by Dems (I don’t think the R leadership was too into it)…