Achieving the Impossible: Expectations of an Obama Presidency

Expectations of an Obama Presidency

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When Barack Obama takes office in January, due to the all things to all people nature of his appeal, he will do so amidst a range of hopes and expectations, including ending the war in Iraq, getting the economy back on track, rebuilding tattered relations with numerous allies and even changing the way we eat and what we drive that is more imposing than those faced by any of his recent predecessors. Achieving all of these goals will be almost impossible. Achieving even one or two of them would be an extraordinary accomplishment.


Obama will, of course, also be evaluated on how he handles the two biggest issues of the campaign and likely of his presidency, at least its early years, as well. These two issues, the economy and the war in Iraq, raise different challenges regarding hope and expectations. A drawdown of troops in Iraq is now almost inevitable. This was a central promise of Obama's campaign; and now the conventional wisdom has largely caught up with where Obama was more than a year ago. Meeting this campaign promise, at least in part, will not be difficult, but Obama must make sure to take the credit for this. It is even possible that this drawdown will happen relatively quickly and without much controversy.


We have no way of really knowing what other issues will dominate Obama's presidency, just as few would have predicted that George W. Bush's presidency would have been largely defined by a Global War on Terror, that Bill Clinton's presidency would have been primarily driven by foreign policy or that George H. W. Bush would owe his defeat to an economic downturn. To be a good president Obama will have to respond effectively to all of these unforeseen crises; to be a great president he will also have to succeed on his own terms with his own agenda.

I know Obama is not God, or even perfect - nor does he pretend to be. However, I do not think we should give up our hope. Obama can be a great president - maybe one of our greatest. We have to get him there. We can't do that if we give up our hope and our expectations of him.

We have to be the force that will lead him to progressive change.

I'll be praying for him and his family. They'll need a lot of prayers as they wade through this mess and try to clean things up.

I will also be wholeheartedly supportive on all good policy of the Obama admin, and fiercely advocate for change on any moves otherwise.

which will grease the skids of the enormous task at hand.