Recent moves on foreign policy may make it easier for the new White House to pick up where the old one left off in key areas: Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Cuba. Domestic policy is a different story.
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Recent moves on foreign policy may make it easier for the new White House to pick up where the old one left off in key areas: Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Cuba. Domestic policy is a different story.
The current hard times for the economy also mean hard times for the great American value of consumerism. Nowhere is the blow to consumption more evident than in the auto industry.
President-elect Obama is under unusual pressure during this period of transition. There is worldwide interest in U.S. action to alleviate the economic crisis, and already Obama has received phone calls urging him to act.
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We all knew that someday there would be an African-American in the Oval Office, but we didn't know when. And when it happened, suddenly America was a changed place.
There has been an almost-universal chorus of welcome for president-elect Barack Obama. Seldom has a new president taken office with such a wide-open mandate to repair America's alliances and friendships.
To the conventional list of challenges facing the new president — from Guantanamo to global warming — add a new one: the threat of deflation. The last time this country experienced large-scale deflation was in the Great Depression. Now, global prices are falling.
Hard to imagine, but in the horse-and-buggy days of our republic, the president was not inaugurated until March. In the 1930s, Congress advanced the inauguration date to Jan. 20. But is even this too long a wait in a world full of challenges to the new president?
Polls suggest that after the elections, Democrats will control the White House and both houses of Congress. Sen. John McCain has expressed concern over one-party rule. Yet, especially in times of crisis, American voters have chosen to give power to a single party.
Iraqi leaders, having written off the Bush administration, are presumably counting on the election of Sen. Barack Obama, who has shown willingness to accept a timetable for withdrawal of American troops.
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World leaders will meet in the U.S. next month for a summit examining the global financial crisis. President Bush will host the gathering. The president's lame-duck status means it will likely be superficial rather than substantive.