New President, New Deal

The past few weeks have shown an interesting transition period in American politics. The current economic crisis is obviously first and foremost on our nation’s mind, but I have not found much reporting on our president-elect's potential long-term strategies (besides op-ed pieces). This is interesting, because I see a number of factors coming together that could allow Obama to move towards a sort of “New Deal;” maybe focusing on the economy, or energy initiatives and environment, but hopefully both.
A little history: for the moment I admire our current president for calling together the G20 summit, and especially for including the leaders of developing countries. This summit produced a communiqué telling worldwide “financial regulators to demand that banks create bigger liquidity cushions, assess their risk-management practices and boost capital requirements for certain risky investing practices,”(1) yet major decisions are to be left to “a second summit [in March 2009] just 101 days after Mr. Obama is sworn in.”(1) The President-elect declined to attend the summit; his first economic move since the election has been to ask for a partial bailout of GM.
While I won’t try to debate the potential effectiveness of this economic decision, it is a little disappointing that Obama is first voicing concern over this matter. It's obviously cautious to not want the first aspect of your presidency to be the failing of the Detroit Three. Even if this is a good economic move, I wish he could find something better for us long-term from this crisis. Not only because Obama has been the candidate of change, but because of the current situation. First, the second G20 summit is well-situated for Obama to assume a leading economic role. Bush, already a lame-duck, either did not push for too much in this first session, or knew he would not be able to. On the flip side, though, by all accounts the Bush administration is making an excellent effort to help the Obama team make a smooth transition into the White House. If Obama continues to make Cabinet appointments at record rates, coupled with the Pennsylvania Avenue security clearance already being granted to his aides, his team should already have plans in place by January. And while the knee-jerk, short term boosting of the US economy has already been made in Washington, and legislation is starting to settle down, I think both legislators and the public are looking for structural change to the economy.
Now, Obama has a few bullet points on the situation, for example “Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America” and “Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.”(2) Both good ideas, yet nothing revolutionary. It is my hope that President Obama will instead introduce a great number of programs to restructure the economy. Al Gore has outlined one such persuasive course of action by creating multiple programs oriented towards "reversing climate change and ridding ourselves of foreign energy dependence."(3) Professor Paul Krugman also advocates for a New Deal of sorts, in which bold short-term moves could engineer a full economic recovery, even more so that Roosevelt did. In his words, "Progressives can only hope that he has the necessary audacity."(4)
As I said many more, although less visible, journalists have written op-ed pieces of the same vein. Considering this, and the favorable situation outlined above, I hope the lack of leaked ideas from the Obama camp will turn into a flood of reform once he takes office.





(1) New York Times, “As Leaders Wrestle with Economy, Developing Nations Get Ringside Seats,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/washington/16leaders.html?scp=2&sq=g20&st=cse
(2) change.gov, Energy & Environment, http://change.gov/agenda/energy_and_environment_agenda/
(3)New York Times, "The Climate for Change," http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html?pagewanted=2
(4)New York Times, “Franklin Delano Obama?”, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html?scp=2&sq=%22new+deal%22&st=nyt