The year of adjustments

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:20:00 +0000

The first year of the Obama administration was largely reactive. The new president and his team spent their time cleaning up the extraordinary messes left for them -- the financial crisis, the Great Recession, Guantánamo, exploding deficits, Iraq, deteriorating Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and attempting to tackle problems left unaddressed for far too long -- climate change and energy policy, healthcare reform, immigration reform.

In that regard the agenda of President Obama's first year was determined to a great degree by the Bush administration's strategic reaction to a global political and economic environment that has passed now. While President Obama cannot escape the governing inheritance left to him, he can do more to discard the outdated vision and rhetorical framework that came along too, and begin to offer a much more compelling, modern and Obama-ish take on the challenges ahead and how we must meet them.

Salon.com > Simon Rosenberg

The year of adjustments