What has Obama Done? Achievements Since Taking Office

After the American Century

President Obama has achieved more than some people realize. Here is a list of some of this major accomplishments. It is an impressive list, considering the economic shambles and expensive foreign wars he inherited from George W. Bush. (The Republicans never mention Bush now. In 2001 he inherited a healthy economy and ruined it. He inherited a shrinking deficit, and expanded it. He inherited a nation at peace, and started two expensive wars that were still going on when he left office.)

The accomplishments of the Obama administration can be divided into four categories: Economy and Tax Reform, Equality and Welfare, Energy and Environment, and Foreign Policy. In addition, I note below some of the cases where Republicans opposed or did not support these achievements.

Economy and Tax Reform

He rescued the auto industry, and now GM and Chrysler are prospering again. The American auto industry has added nearly a quarter of a million jobs since June 2009.  

In contrast, Romney published an op-ed piece saying that the Federal government should not help GM and Chrysler, and that bankruptcy was the best option.

His Recovery Act helped to stave off a second Great Depression.  

Many of the Republicans in Congress opposed this Act.

He pushed through middle-class tax cuts that saved the typical family $3,600 over the last four years.

He has signed 18 tax cuts for small businesses in his first term.

There were 5.2 million new private-sector jobs during his first term, and the unemployment level has continued to fall, despite the fact that many corporations are replacing workers with robots.

He ordered the overhaul of federal regulations to make them more practical and  efficient. In the next five years this will save businesses $10 billion.

He created a landmark Wall Street reform that reins in abuses that led to the financial crisis and ends the era of taxpayer bailouts and "too big to fail."  

Republicans de-regulated the financial industry and during the GW Bush years they neglected their duty to keep an eye on it.

Wall Street reform created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the nation's first federal agency focused solely on consumer financial protection. The Bureau protects families from unfair and abusive financial practices from Wall Street and the financial industry.  

Republicans fought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and when it was passed into law, they delayed the appointment of administrators to run it. 

Equality and Welfare

The first bill President Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help women get equal pay for equal work.  

A majority of Republicans voted against this bill.

He doubled funding for Pell Grants, to make college affordable for 10 million families.

His student loan reform ended billions in bank subsidies cutting them out as middlemen and reinvesting those savings directly in students.  

A majority of Republicans voted against this bill.

He established the American Opportunity Tax Credit, worth up to $10,000 over four years of college.

Health care reform provides affordable  coverage to every American and will lower premiums by an average of $2,000 per family by 2019. Obamacare also expanded access to lifesaving preventive care such as cancer screenings and immunizations with no out-of-pocket costs for 54 million Americans. Obamacare ends insurance discrimination against 129 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Because of Obamacare 3 million more young adults have health insurance.  

Almost all Republicans voted against Obamacare. Romney championed similar legislation in Massachusetts but later opposed it.

Obama repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, allowing gay and lesbian members of the military to serve openly for the first time. He directed the Justice Department to stop defending DOMA in federal courts, and took the practical and compassionate step of extending hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners.

A majority of Republicans voted against this bill.

When Congress failed to reform the immigration system, he streamlined the legal immigration process and adopted a policy that lifts the shadow of deportation from immigrants brought to the US as children.

Romney, Ryan, and the Republicans have called for immigrant "self-deportation" and take a harsh line against these children. 70% pf Latinos voted for Obama.

Energy and Environment

His investments in clean energy have helped more than double the electricity obtained from wind and solar sources and helped increase biofuel production to its highest level in American history.  

Republicans opposed these bills.

He has doubled automobile fuel efficiency standards, which will save drivers thousands of dollars at the gas pump, reduce dependence on foreign oil, and reduce the impact of automobiles on the environment. He has helped cut US dependence on foreign oil to its lowest level in 20 years, and the US appears to be headed toward near self-sufficiency in oil and gas production. From an environmental perspective, however, this increase is based in good part on fracking, which pumps water and chemicals underground at high pressure, which can vitiate the local water supply.
Republicans opposed raining mileage stanards, but they legalized fracking during the last years of the Bush presidency.

He signed one of the largest expansions of protected wilderness in a generation and established standards to reduce toxic air pollution.  

Romney would have "relaxed" air pollution standards for coal-fired utilities.

Foreign Policy

President Obama ended the war in Iraq.

He sent the largest security assistance package to Israel in history and funded the Iron Dome system, protecting Israeli homes and schools from rocket attacks.

He expanded and improved health care and job training for returning veterans.

He negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons in both countries.

He eliminated Osama Bin Laden and decimated al-Qaeda's leadership.

Obama has accomplished a great deal. The American people deserve a more constructive Congress to help solve their problems.

Victory for a Compromise: Obama Care

After the American Century

It costs four times more more money to have a baby in the United States than it does in Germany or in Canada. 

Seen from outside the United States, the Supreme Court decision, which found the new American health system to be constitutional, is only a partial victory. For the law is a compromise that keeps competition and profit-making at the center of American health care. This means that the US will continue to spend billions of dollars supporting a vast health insurance industry and a huge number of tort lawyers. All those white-collar workers and all those buildings could be put to much better uses than making money out of human suffering and human need.

Doubtless there are some areas in which competition can improve medical care, but I doubt these benefits are worth all costs associated with a medical industry that is organized for profit, with all the legal fees, court battles over malpractice, and endless form-filling and record-keeping involved. 

It is much better, surely, to have a system like that in Scandinavia where all patient costs are automatically covered through taxation, and where hospitals compete to provide the best care, researchers compete for funds, and doctor's compete to be the best in their field.  This costs little more than half as much as the US system. Yet Scandinavians compare quite well with Americans when it comes to life expectancy, child morality rates, and other measures of well-being.

According to the 2012 Statistical Abstract of the United States. health expenditures rose as a percentage of American gross national product from 9% in 1990 to 16% in 2008. They do not give statistics for after that year, but surely no one is going to argue that medical costs have dropped since then. By comparison, in Denmark medical costs were 8.9% of GDP in 1990, almost exactly the same as in the US then, but since have only risen to 9.7% of GDP.  In Germany the corresponding figures are a rise for 8.4 to 10.5%, in the Netherlands from 7.4 to 9.9%, in Japan 6.5 to 8.1%.

In short, by 2008 Americans were spending one dollar in every six for medical care, while the Danes were only spending one out of every ten kroner, and Japanese were spending only one yen of every twelve.

How about the rest of the English-speaking world? In 2008 New Zealand used 9.9% of its GDP on health care, compared to 8.6% in Australia, 10.4% in Canada and 8.7% in Britain. In short, no nation on earth except the United States uses anywhere near 16% of its GDP on health care. The closest "competitor" was France, at 11.2%.

Americans have made progress with their new health system, which requires all citizens to carry medical insurance and makes certain that they can buy affordable coverage. But it is still an expensive and inefficient system compared to what already exists in the rest of the developed world. 

Health costs for the typical American family doubled from 2011 to 2011. President Obama was right to see that such galloping growth is unsustainable, and the new system he has put into place should stop costs from rising so fast. But Americans need to develop a medical system that can reduce costs to levels common in other advanced industrial nations.Even with Obamacare, the US system is behind the competition.

Obama Correct to Leave Iraq

After the American Century

After months of negotiations, the US and Iraq were unable to agree on how many troops might be left behind to help train and support the coalition government. Reportedly, the US suggested a level of 10,000, but the Iraqis wanted only half that, or even less. President Obama then decided, after repeated attempts to get a clear agreement, to pull the plug.

This seems the right decision, and probably the only option. Would a few thousand American troops really make much of a difference to the country's security? Keeping a symbolic force in the country might well have been a continued provocation to the opposition. Much better to give Iraq a clear message: the US is leaving. Iraq, you are now on your own, as a sovereign nation, to succeed or fail.

Nine years is a long time to intervene in any country, and the United States at some point must have higher priorities than continuing to keep 42,000 troops in Iraq. There were once four times that many, plus troops from the "coalition of the willing."

I was never a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, which was justified by the false claim that it harbored weapons of mass destruction. The country was ruled by a terrible regime, but removal of that regime has cost 700+  billion dollars and an enormous loss of life. The war itself was not difficult to win, but the Bush Administration disgracefully showered huge contracts on its political allies to rebuild the country and treated prisoners disgracefully, angering the entire Arab world against the abuses, displayed in photographs for all to see on the Internet.  An on-line poll conducted by MSNBC has found, as of this writing, that 87% of the respondents do not think the Iraq war was worth it. Many commentators share this view, including the Center for American Progress.

This nine years in Iraq offers quite a contrast with Libya, where the cost was far lower, the time required shorter, and American troops never entered the country. This difference strongly suggests the difference between Bush and Obama, Republicans and Democrats.

The arts of peace are more nuanced and difficult than the arts of war. Let us hope that Iraq will do better governing itself than it has under the occupation. But for the US, it is time to spend its scarce resources elsewhere. Think what that $700 billion might have been used for.

Obama After 18 Months

After the American Century

It has only been eighteen months since George Bush left the White House, but already the American public seems to be suffering from amnesia. The American economy is not recovering quickly from its near collapse under Bush, and this weakness is nevertheless laid at Obama’s door. His popularity has fallen below 50% for some time now. The great bank bailout has been reasonably successful, with much of the money being paid back, yet many Americans talk about the bailout as though it was not a loan but a permanent part of the national debt. The re-regulation of Wall Street has gone through Congress, yet Republicans proclaim that Obama has now hobbled the capitalist horse. (For a reality check, consider the Canadian banks which did not need a bailout because they were restrained by sensible legislation.)

And then there is the endlessly repeated, and endlessly stupid, claim that the health care bill is socialistic. This would be silly if so many did not believe it. If Obama really had created a socialistic health care system then (1) he would have  given free medical care to all citizens and permanent residents, in exchange for higher taxes, (2) he would have put all doctors and nurses in public hospitals on the government payroll, and (3) prescription medicine would be free or heavily subsidized.  This is pretty much what the health care system looks like in Denmark, England, or Germany. But the Obama plan did not do any of these things. It made health care available to all, in exchange for payment to private insurers. It left hospitals under the same management as before, and so forth. The Obama plan is an improvement, but it is not much like a European plan.

My American readers might recall that they do have socialistic elements in their government, notably the fire departments which are paid for by everyone and put out all fires regardless of where they are or whose property it is. The theory seems to be that minimizing conflagrations is a good thing for the neighborhood. Free public libraries are also rather socialistic, though this did not stop that famous capitalist Andrew Carnegie from building quite a few of them. Then there are those terribly socialistic institutions, the free public schools, and so on.

Today’s column clearly has only that most general of subjects, the instability of American public opinion, which so often is based not on logic but pavlovian  responses to key words and silly phrases. The circus entrepreneur P. T. Barnum  once said that no one ever went broke because he underestimated the American public. By November all too many Americans will be convinced that not Bush but Obama undermined the economy by over-spending the budget, letting the banks get out of control, and imposing a “socialistic health” care system. But it was Bush who cut taxes, especially for the wealthy and then overspent the budget by billions in the unfinanced wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was the Bush Administration that failed to keep a watchful eye on the banks and Wall Street, until the economy was near collapse before the 2008 election even took place.

In American political culture, eighteen months is a long time, and some seem to have trouble seeing cause and effect, or separating substance form allegation. It is not easy to be President in the best of times, and far harder than in the present. On the whole, Obama has done a good job. But Americans are an impatient people, and in the off year elections the party that lost the last time usually makes at least a partial comeback. We shall see. 

Obama's Nobel Prize Address: The Just War & The Four Freedoms

After the American Century Posting # 199

President Obama has given a major speech on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize. He began by admitting quite frankly that he was at the beginning of his international labor and rather a surprise winner of the prize. He then confronted what many see as a contradiction: that he is currently the commander in chief of the American armed forces which are engaged in two wars.

To his credit, he did not mention George Bush. It would have been fair enough to blame him for the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, at the least. Rather, Obama made the case for just war, when diplomacy fails, and provided a summary of his foreign policy, linking it to Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. In doing so, he specifically rejected the "realist" approach to foreign policy, which tends to be embraced by Republicans more than Democrats.

One aspect of this speech will be striking to most Europeans. Obama spoke several times of evil, a word that one might more expect to hear from George Bush. In Oslo, Obama declared: "Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. " and later said: "We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us." This is not far from the language of the Lord's Prayer. Such language is not unusual from an American politician. But "evil" is seldom heard in mainstream European politics, which are far less religious in tone.

Part of the explanation for this difference is structural. In Denmark, the Queen always ends her yearly speech on New Year's eve with the same words: "God protect Denmark." This is the ordinary language of a European monarch, but it is less common for the European politicians to ask for the Lord's protection. The American president, however, must play both roles.

However, Obama does not merely mention "evil" in passing, in a formulaic way. The core of his argument that war is necessary and unavoidable is rooted in the belief that some men are beyond the reach of reason or diplomacy. While he referred to Ghandi and King and clearly admires their idealism, ultimately Obama presented himself as hard-headed idealist. He is closing down the prisons at Guantanamo Bay. He promises to ophold the Geneve Conventions and to the honor Human Rights. But he also sees a world where wars and conflicts remain unavoidable.

He does not see the same world as George W. Bush, however. Obama sees the greatest hope for peace in international cooperation, in standing together against regimes that oppress their own people, that seek to acquire nuclear weapons, or that threaten other states. His foreign policy is one of enlightened self-interest that echoed President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. In his speech, Obama argued that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want when achieved in any nation ultimately enhance the security of its neighbors and by extension the rest of humanity. He may not have mentioned Roosevelt by name, but by employing his language, Obama aligned himself with core values that guided American foreign policy before the Cold War, and made them appear equally useful today.

Afghanistan

After the American Century

Imagine you are in Obama's inner circle. You have inherited Bush's foreign policy, including the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do you do? Pulling out immediately would invite the Taliban and Al Qaeda back into the country, and it would also expose the new president to fierce criticism from the Republicans. No president wants to lose a war in the first year of his administation, and no American politician can survive very long if he seems be doing favors for Osama Bin Ladin. But if the Americans are going to continue to lead an army in Afghanistan, what are the realistic possibilities for success? This was such a difficult issue that the Administration took a year to decide.

The answer has now been made public, and in essence it is to escalate the war for almost two years and then begin to pull the troops out. This resembles in some respects the "solution" to the Iraq situation, which conceivably still could work. The idea seems to be that a nation torn apart by centuries of religious, ethnic, and tribal differences can and will pull itself together if given a timetable for withdrawel, support in developing new democratic institutions, and the promise of control of its own destiny. But will the Iraqi or the Afghan people will take responsibility for their own fate if they know that soon all the foreign troops will leave? The answer is still unclear in Iraq. On the positive side it was long a secular state (albeit a dictatorship) and the presence of vast oil reserves gives it an economic foundation and a good reason not to let civil war paralyze exports. On the negative side, the Kurds want indepdence, the religious factions tend to kill each other, and Iran is not a model neighbor.

Unhappily, things are less promising in Afghanistan, which is a far less developed country than Iraq. Under the Taliban it had one of the world's most repressive, fundamentalist regimes. And it does not have oil. Rather, the proverbial undiscussed elephant in the room, and a rather sweaty demanding elephant at that, is the drug traffic that has been a central part of the Afghan economy for a long time. Afghanistan produces about 90% of the world's opium. Worse, the size of the poppy crop has been growing not shrinking. (For more about that click here)

This is not a new or casual illegal business, nor one that be eradicated easily. Profits from opium sales are a central source of funds for the Taliban and also for semi-autonomous local leaders. Farmers can make more money growing poppies than anything else, and if they do so they also gain protection from powerful neighbors.

However, the Obama speech about Afghanistan did not discuss this aspect of the problem very much. In one passage declared, "To advance security, opportunity, and justice - not just in Kabul , but from the bottom up in the provinces - we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers. That is how we can help the Afghan government serve its people, and develop an economy that isn't dominated by illicit drugs."

This is surely correct. At least in theory something like a special Peace Corps for Afghanistan ought to have been part of the Afghan strategy from the beginning. George Bush failed at the arts of peace in both Iraq and Afghanistan, however, leaving Obama with two very large problems to solve without much capital to do it after saving a collapsing banking system.

But where are these agricultural specialists and educators and engineers going to come from? How can they work effectively in an environment permeated by the opium trade? Who will protect them day to day? Who is going to pay their salaries and guarantee them medical treatment for the rest of their lives if they are maimed or wounded? Unemployment may be high, but it will be hard to recruit people for such dangerous work. Yet it is essential work. If Afghanistan remains focused on producing opium, it will have a large renegade economy that pays no taxes, works against the state, and funds war lords and insurgents.

Real Test of Obama Begins Now

After the American Century

President Obama has now been in office for three months or so, and his first hundred days will be over soon. While he clearly has had some successes and remains far more popular with the voters than George W. Bush was last year, this is still a period of transition. The massive deficit spending is only beginning to have an effect on the economy, which has continued to weaken overall, measured in terms of rising unemployment, the drop in housing starts, and declining real estate prices. GM and Chrysler remain on the brink of collapse, and banks are still struggling. These are not problems the Democrats created, but the weak economy does distract from attempts at larger reforms. Obama knows this and has kept calling for an overhaul of health care, energy policy, pollution control, education, and defense procurement. In all of these crucial areas, the new administration has not yet achieved very much, precisely because of the financial mess that had to be cleaned up first.

The question now is whether his own party will keep itself disciplined and rise to the occasion. In 1933 FDR's Democratic Party made fundamental changes. We have not seen a 100 days to match his achievements. Arguably, the crisis is not (yet?) as dire, but it is serious and the Democrats need to stick together. Obama has been abroad more than any other president at this point in his administration, and he has shown once again that he is exceedingly popular overseas, whether Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic, France, Turkey or Mexico. This is a good thing, but it may not translate into legislative achievement at home. Arguably, he should stay in Washington most of the time for a good while, and let Secretary of State Clinton do the globe trotting for a while. The real test of whether Obama can deliver his program has begun.

Exective Pay and the Angry Public

After the American Century

The average American is furious at Wall Street firms, banks, fat-cat executives, and government bailouts, which do not seem to be helping the ordinary people. But the executives themselves appear only vaguely aware of the unjust disparities between their incomes and those of most people. President Obama has proposed that firms receiving Washington bailouts must limit executive salaries to $500,000.

There is a passage in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities which explains how easily a salary of $1 million a year disappears in New York City. The protagonist of that novel feels he must live in a certain part of Manhattan, send his children to private school, and drive German car, which requires a protected indoor parking space, and so on. The joke is that the monthly $80,000 always disappears before payday, and at the end of the month he feels a little pinched for spending money just like anyone else.

For an up-dated, real life estimation of the costs of being an executive in New York City, an article in the New York Times by Allen Salkin explains how difficult (read impossible) it will be to get along on an annual salary of "only" $500,000 (2.8 million kroner). The assumption is that such executives must have an armed chauffeur, a second summer house that costs $4 million (more than 20 million kroner), and so forth. Reading the piece, one is not entirely certain that the reporter can see the absurdity of these "needs."

But for the record, here are a few comparative facts and figures. Salkin reports that such an executive (defined as male with a non-working spouse) has the following expenses:

Mortgage and monthly fee for a Coop $192,000
Nanny $45,000
Private School $32,000 (per child)
Garage $8400
Driver $75,000-125,00
Personal trainer (3 times a week) $12,000
Formal gowns (for "charity balls"), $35,000
etc.

It is perfectly obvious to the 99.9% of the world that does not have an income of $1 million or more a year, that this mortgage is too expensive and that all the other items on the list are unnecessary. Indeed, in New York City even a car is unnecessary, as they have a subway and taxis there the last time I checked.

Now consider the expenditures of the average American family, from the Statistical Abstract of the United States.

Annual income: $48,000 (Black families only $30,800, single mothers, $23,000)
(one tenth the cap Obama has proposed, half what the executive pays for a chauffeur)

House: 6 rooms ( in 2006 before the economy collapsed) $404,000
(one tenth the cost of the executive's summer house)

Automobiles (including monthly payments, insurance, gasoline, etc.) $8,300
(what the executive pays for parking)

Nanny? Are you kidding?
Personal Trainer? The family dog insists on walks
Formal Gowns? Get real.

The average American has every right to be angry, especially when they learn that even as the banks were failing they granted their executives billions in bonuses, paid for by the US taxpayers. But what will be the political consequences of this anger? Will it build up pressure for Obama's programs? Or will it be channeled elsewhere?

Obama: The Change is Real

After the American Century

I must admit that I wondered if the inauguration of Obama would make a visible mark on daily life. But landing in Boston yesterday and talking to people, the random encounters of an ordinary day, strongly suggest that Americans really do sense a major change. At least in New England, George Bush was experienced as a burden that has dropped away, even a nightmare from which they now have awakened.

President Obama's first acts underline the sense of change. His staff, should they leave the White House before he does, will be prohibited from lobbying so long as Obama remains president. This is a much higher ethical standard than before.

Obama has also insisted that government be more open, and that the federal officials should obey the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. That is, they should give out information in all cases unless there is a clear and definite reason not to. Not incidentally. this may reveal some less than noble activities of the Bush Administration. But as time goes on, this openness will become a constant pressure on Obama's appointees as well.

Most significantly, Obama has ordered that the Guantanamo Prison be closed and its inmates either released or placed in American prisons where they will have the protection of the Constitution. He is returning the nation to the rule of law, including a repudiation of any form of torture - which the Bush Administration pursued both in Cuba and through other nations outside the United States.

Finally, Obama has set an example by freezing the salaries of those on his staff who make more than $100,000. Counterpointing this gesture and making its symbolism all the more necessary, it came out today that literally days before Merrill Lynch was purchased by Bank of America, the virtually bankrupt Merrill Lynch gave selected executives huge bonuses - several billion dollars in bonuses. With one hand they were begging for and getting a Federal bailout and with the other they were lining their own pockets. Quite possibly this was not a crime, legally, but ethically it stinks. That was the end of the Bush era, the wage freeze is the ethical beginning of an Obama era that stands for fair play, the rule of law, the abolition of torture, and the end of cozy relations between lobbying and governing.

Not bad for just two days work.

Giving Pragmatism and Brains a Chance

After the American Century

The rapprochement between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama apparently has been taking place since June. Clearly neither has such a sensitive ego that it prevents them from seeing the advantages of working together. I admit that I am surprised both that he would ask her to become his Secretary of State and that she would accept. I always thought that being a Senator, especially a high-profile Senator from a large state, was a better position than serving in the cabinet. Being Secretary of State is the most important job there, to be sure, but it is potentially only a four year run, and at best eight years. In contrast, Clinton has such a strong hold on her Senate seat that she could keep it for life.

So far, it seems that Obama's criteria for getting a post in his administration are that one has to be very smart, preferably with an Ivy League education, and not too much of an ideologue. He seems to prefer pragmatists who have Washington experience. He has drawn on many from the Clinton White House, which is not surprising, since to find other Democrats with such experience he would have to go back to 1980, the last year of Carter's administration. Most of his staff are now retired. As with all cabinets, this one almost assuredly looks better before it takes power that it likely will in four years time. But after eight years of ideologues and a less than brilliant president, surely it is time to give pragmatism and brains a chance. This will be novel for Washington lobbyists and for Fox News, not to mention any Republicans who still believe that Obama is a socialist.

As the appointment process proceeds, the contrast increases between the staggering economy and hope that the Obama will be able to turn it around. His announcement yesterday of a major economic stimulus package, ideally to be passed as soon as possible after January 20, clearly is calculated to hearten the market, and to help bridge the 8 week gap between now and the moment he assumes control. Call it "change they need to believe in." If the meltdown continues, Obama may inherit a nationwide crisis so palpable that his plans will be passed quickly. If the economy miraculously improves, he will presumably face a bit more opposition. But either way, I think we can expect passage of a stimulus package that features green energy technologies, tax cuts for the middle class, and incentives for industries to create jobs.

Obama's Restricted Freedom

After the American Century

There is a curious irony in President Barack Obama's e-mail situation. While a Senator he was glued to his Blackberry and emailed constantly. As President, it appears he will have to give up his freedom in cyberspace. Not only will official regulations require that all his official business be preserved for posterity, but also national security mandates that his emailing be restricted to harmless topics, if not cut off altogether.

The erosion of the line between public and private is a problem for all Internet users. Google can mine information on those who use its search engine, strangers can see photographs we post on Facebook, and huge amounts of personal information ends up on the WWW, often without the persons described, discussed or documented being aware of it. Therefore, the President has to become an intensely private person, with little or no personal presence on the Internet, however many official web pages and news stories there are about him or her.

In Obama's case this seems particularly ironic. More than any other candidate, he mastered the new media, and used it to raise money and coordinate his campaign. He apparently also used it to stay in touch with ordinary people - old friends whom he could trust to tell him what the buzz was on the street. E-mail gave him access to life beyond the bubble of celebrity and security. But now, for the next four, quite possibly eight years, Obama will enter a cocoon of cyber-isolation - or he may become a reader but not a sender of emails. One assumes he will still have a computer and that he will be able to surf the web, perhaps under a new assumed name each day.

The President is seen as the most powerful person in the United States, yet his movements are restricted, his contacts are monitored, his every decision recorded, and his email cut off. While there are compensations, to be sure, holding that office to a considerable degree restricts freedom and discourages spontaneity. For decades the President has not been able, on the spur of the moment, to jump in the car and go for an aimless, relaxing jaunt into the countryside. It seems the freedom to roam in cyberspace will be restricted as well.

But on the bright side, for at least four years Obama will not get any spam!

Obama Prepares

After the American Century

The world continues to marvel that Obama is indeed president, as do I. But at the same time the candidate is rapidly metamorphosing into the leader of the US, as he chooses a staff and decides whom to entrust with cabinet positions. These appointments are not easy to make, not just because each position has its own special requirements, but because the whole pattern of appointments needs to include women, minorities, experienced people, exciting newcomers, major supporters, and even some Republicans. Filling each post without looking at the larger pattern can easily result in too few women, for example, or no Republicans.

Juggling all the names and positions and having them fall into a coherent pattern takes time, in contrast to the European system, where a shadow government is ready to step in and rule on a few days notice. The more than two month transition period has the advantage that Obama can think carefully about what he wants to accomplish, but the disadvantage that a lame Duck George Bush remains in charge as the economy crumbles.

The worst of the bad news is that General Motors, long the world's largest auto maker, is in danger of collapse, while Ford and Chrysler are not doing much better. But there is plenty of other bad news, ranging from the highest unemployment rates in 16 years to announcements at most colleges and universities that faculty hiring will cease and that student aid will diminish. This is because universities live in part off their endowments, invested largely in the stock market. So, as the car industry goes bankrupt, universities fall on hard times.

The auto and oil industries are old industry, while the newer high-tech companies are doing somewhat better. The task Obama faces is to haul these older companies into the new millennium, building new kinds of energy-efficient automobiles, and giving workers health insurance, which the corporations can no longer afford to provide. In other words, as Obama knows himself, the proposals he has made on renewable energy, health care, and stimuli for the economy are all interconnected. Something like a European medical system is necessary for corporate recovery. A new energy program is necessary to make the nation more efficient, less polluting, and more competitive.

Therefore, the first hundred days of the new administration are crucial. Will he be able to coordinate and implement the fine ideas he developed in his campaign? Can the Democrats remain together and vote in their program? Or will Congress, as usual, bury the new programs in a myriad special provisions and pork-barrel items for their constituencies? There are many ways to derail or fatally delay or prevent implementation of the Obama program, which is why it is so important that he selects the right team for the job.

Every new president has a "honeymoon" period at the start of his administration, a time when it is easier to get new bills passed. Bill Clinton frittered his "honeymoon" away, and had little to show for his first six months in office. We will know by June whether Obama will do better.