The Nation on the most crucial domestic and foreign issues facing his administration in the new year.
In 2009, his first year in office, President Obama had to contend with the worst economy since the Great Depression, two wars, plus deathers, birthers, tea partiers and Sarah Palin. Unfortunately for him, 2010 should make 2009 seem like a cakewalk. Here are the biggest challenges his administration faces in the new year.
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Obama has pledged to play a hands-on role in the reconciliation of the Senate and House healthcare reform bills. We hope he will focus on affordability, enforcement and financing in a way that will help make sure the legislation helps as many people as it possibly can.
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Obama has taken some good early steps to rein in double-digit unemployment but he must do much more to lower the jobless number or his popularity will continue to erode and his re-election in 2012 may be at stake.
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As Iran’s government (led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pictured) continues to crack down violently on dissent and lose credibility, will President Obama meet his goal of direct diplomatic talks in the hopes of nuclear disarmament?
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The Obama administration has laid out the ambitious goal of passing immigration policy reform in 2010, but it remains to be seen in how Obama’s plan would make a fundamental break from the past. Real reform will not only require a path to citizenship for undocumented workers but also, a crackdown on the illegal and violent persecution of immigrant communities here in the US.
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The president’s escalation in Afghanistan will succeed or fail largely depending on the leadership of the recently re-elected and thoroughly corrupt Afghan government run by Hamid Karzai. In the meantime, Obama will have to continue to justify more war and lost lives to an increasingly cynical American public.
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The ongoing war in Afghanistan arguably serves as a distraction from the significant US presence in Pakistan, where Al Qaeda terrorists supposedly are trained and given orders. Complicating matters further is Pakistan’s nuclear capability, making it what some consider “the most dangerous country on Earth.”
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In November, Obama will face a serious test of his political muscle, when voters go to the polls in crucial midterm elections. Will Democrats lose their majority in the House and super-majority in the Senate or will American public reject the Party of No (a.k.a. the Republicans)?
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The US military succeeded in withdrawing American troops from major Iraqi cities in 2009 but in 2010 comes the hard part–bringing the war in Iraq to its conclusion.
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A flawed, but still significant, climate change bill has passed the House of Representatives. But as the healthcare fight proved, the Senate will likely be a much higher hurdle to clear. Can Obama garner a single Republican vote in favor of “cap-and-trade”?
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Obama (who finally signed the Matthew Shepard Act into law in October 2009) can continue to repair his damaged relations with the LGBT community by repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act in 2010.
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Though the rhetoric Obama has used during his first year in office has taken a slightly harder line than Bush’s, his administration has failed to rein in Israel, even after atrocities committed in Gaza over a year ago (amply documented in the Goldstone Report). Can he succeed–where so many presidents have failed–in forging a real and fair two state solution for Israel and Palestine?
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In 2009, Wall Street made a comeback. In the new year, will the Obama administration seize this opportunity to hold them accountable through comprehensive finance reform?
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During the 2008 election campaign, Obama didn’t speak out much on education besides promising to fully fund “No Child Left Behind” and to increase aid to students trying to pay for college. In 2010, Obama will need to put some meat on the bones of his policy.
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In addition to healthcare and education, Obama outlined energy early on in his administration as one of the pillars of his domestic agenda. Somehow he must find a way to combat our excessive reliance on oil, coal’s emission of greenhouse gasses and to find alternative energy sources.
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In the second year of his presidency, Obama needs to decide which Obama he intends to be. Will he be the inspirational icon he often was during the 2008 campaign? Will he be a poll-driven, Clinton-style triangulator? Or will he be a pragmatic but also charismatic voice of progressive ideology? During his first year in office, he has been all three. Here’s hoping he recaptures the spirit of ’08 again and emerges as the leader progressives hoped he’d be.
