The Obama future: Great expectations (Pt 2)
The thing about America is, she has had a great start. To be frank, it was an experiment, I mean, how it all began. The Founding Father drafted a great constitution, one which opened up opportunities for many great things in later times.
Newly-installed president Barack Obama has acknowledged that the constitution is not perfect. That was frank and contrite of him.
The thing about America is, she has had a great start. To be frank, it was an experiment, I mean, how it all began. The Founding Father drafted a great constitution, one which opened up opportunities for many great things in later times.
Newly-installed president Barack Obama has acknowledged that the constitution is not perfect. That was frank and contrite of him.
A young white American told me during our volunteer outings on Martin Luther King Jr Day on Jan 19: “The problem with America is we are always full of ourselves and because of that, we forgot to continue learning.”
This seemed to be especially true of the last eight years of the George W Bush administration. His philosophy of war - the ‘us against them’ position - not only epitomised presumptuousness but also falsely dichotomised the world into ‘US and its allies against the terrorist states’.
Against this background, Obama has, if anything, introduced himself to America and to the world as a president who will not forget to learn. He has to, not with the impressive line-up of personnel he has chosen for his term in the White House.
He has deliberately chosen people who are intelligent, independent minded and with more experience in politics and in the Congress than himself - in short, technocrats who know their stuff. This means, he must be ready to take advice, even when this does not go down well with his own personality.
Instead of being preoccupied with trying to change the world, Obama's goals are more local - to revive the economy and to provide jobs. His pro-growth and pro-jobs stance come with a hefty price tag, $300 billion even before he assumes office.
There are two areas which the biggest bucks are likely to go into, energy and healthcare. The latter could not have come at a more timely moment. America is infamous for its expensive healthcare service as well as the lack of public healthcare services. In a bad economy, Americans could do with further government intervention in these areas.
Bill Clinton had attempted reform while in office with his universal healthcare package which included employee healthcare insurance. But this was defeated because mandated health insurance proved too much for major corporations - given the expensive healthcare services - and for the insurance industry, given the likelihood of lower insurance cost if implemented.
The Obama administration's projected $65 billion a year healthcare plan will avoid the pitfalls of Clinton's proposal - mandated health insurance - but will inevitably focus on two areas, health insurance and health providers.
By investing and improving public health services through tax money, Obama has promised a lower cost of healthcare for the average American. Healthcare insurance will also be made cheaper and more accessible for the people through wider coverage of illnesses and some sort of required contribution by larger corporations.
Playing catch up
The second area which Obama has targeted for reform is energy. With the appointment of Nobel Prize winner Asian-American Steven Chu as the Secretary of Energy, America is promised expert handling of that department. On the radar are green energy and green industry with an annual budget of about $15 billion for the next 10 years.
A major part of the plan is to “break the addiction” on oil dependency, in Obama’s words. This is an ambitious plan for a nation which annually consumes about a quarter of the world oil production. But precisely because of the pattern of oil consumption, Obama's plan is to be heralded.
If successful, America will soon set the pace for development of global green energy. This very much delayed development will strengthen international efforts towards a cleaner earth and finally welcome America into the family of Kyoto Protocol, which America has stubbornly shunned for the sake of its economy. The spillover from the government's investment will be an estimated five million ‘green jobs’.
Nonetheless, Obama's energy policy will affect the international oil market. Politically, this will be an interesting development for America and the world’s oil producers, notably in the Islamic world. For example, Saudi Arabia's oil-based income constitutes up to 90 percent of its GDP; so any radical reduction in world consumption of oil will adversely affect revenue in producer-countries whose economies are typically monogonous.
Obama's foreign policy should be a welcome departure from that of Bush. The first challenge is the Middle East crisis. Obama will stick to the general policy of seeing Israel as an ally, but he has promised to listen to both sides, again more inclined towards Clinton's approach.
The Israel-Palestine ceasefire this week looked as if both sides were willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, which is a good development. 
The new president has also committed to end the war in Iraq with a "phased and responsible" removal of American troops. Instead of threatening a military campaign to achieve its objective, Obama administration has declared that its carrot will be the economy.
One important focus will be Iran and its nuclear programme. Iran will be offered membership in the World Trade Organisation if it agrees to abandon the programme. Whether or not this works, it is substantially different from Bush's constant threat to send in the army against ‘rogue’ states.
Americans are hopeful that their new president will not forget to continue learning. They hope he will lead to the restoration of America’s lost dignity and moral leadership of the world, whether in regard to social welfare, environmental issues or foreign policy.
The question is whether Obama can deliver his promises. Only time will tell but, as he has said, the union and its foundational documents, though not perfect, offer the opportunity to become more perfect.
He has invited Americans to journey with him towards that perfection - as a president who will not forget to continue learning, that is.
Read Part 1 here
STEVEN SIM is currently in Washington DC as part of the International Visitors Programme - ‘Transition of Power in the US Federal System’ - a multi-regional project under the US State Department. He joined an estimated two million Americans at Barack Obama’s inauguration as president yesterday.
