You think Abraham Lincoln had it tough?

14 January 2009

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James Forsyth says that Barack Obama will need all his remarkable talents to confront an extraordinary set of challenges — not only the economy, but global security

Short of wearing a stove-pipe hat, Obama could not make his desire to be compared to Abraham Lincoln any more obvious. He plans to travel to his inauguration via the same route that Lincoln did, be sworn in on the Lincoln Bible and eat lunch off replicas of the Lincolns’ White House china. Michelle and the girls must have wondered if he was going to change their name when he took them to the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday night.

Obama has set a high bar for himself; comparisons with America’s greatest president are rarely favourable to an incumbent. Bush and Clinton both chose to set less daunting presidents as their benchmarks, Reagan and Kennedy, respectively.

But the President-elect has never been shy about setting ambitious goals. The night he sealed the Democratic nomination, he confidently declared: ‘I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.’

Can Obama live up to his own words? Realistically, making it through the next four years without any major disasters would, in the present circumstances, be a great achievement and almost certainly enough to get him re-elected.

No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has faced such a daunting set of challenges. Domestically, Obama inherits a recession that is at risk of turning into a depression. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low — this year the deficit will probably be larger than total federal government spending in 2000, and by next year government debt will have spiked to 60 per cent of GDP; little wonder that the markets now think there is a 6 to 10 per cent risk of a US government default.

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Dwight Vandryver

January 16th, 2009 1:21am Report this comment

At the end of the day, it depends on the psychology of the American people. If they think they are beaten, as we do here by the continuing doom and gloom issuing from the media and politicians, then that will be their self-fulfilling destiny. On the other hand, it only takes one bank to put up the sign "business as usual", the rest will follow suit, and happy days will be here again - spending money we haven't earnt. Without consumerism, global economies grind to a halt. So let's get started buying stuff we don't actually need, but which expresses our own individualities. You know it makes sense until the Earth's natural resources finally become depleted.

robert

January 19th, 2009 9:59am Report this comment

The US economy is a highly developed and complex machine: for many years it was the engine of industry for the whole world. Can the nest President of the United States who is a lawyer and a social worker and a politician who got to where is is by smoke mirrors and other tricks fix it? I doubt it. We will have to rely on Congress: he will not be able to control congress: wait and see.

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