Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
Obama has an enormous number and variety of problems to deal with, but if he's as good at actually being president as he is at looking presidential, he might just pull it off.
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Compare what we know about Clinton with what we have already seen from Obama.
Clinton was superb at grasping a current problem and acting on it. Generals loves how he would ask the right questions and give them the leadership they needed. As a result, Clinton turned potential disasters such as Haiti, the Mississippi floods, and the Balkans into simple and immediately resolved issues.
But Clinton was not so good at getting ahead of issues. For example, he was slow at getting together an administration. He was slow at defining an ultimate and long term solution to the Middle East once extremists had successfully undermined the Oslo Accords by (for example) killing Rabin. Having realized he had no solution, Clinton desperately tried another 'Hail Mary' solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict only in his last year.
So far, we know Obama has long term plans. For example, he has no short term plan for our economic calamity. Obama has already confirmed a belief in what economists predict – an example of addressing a problem rather than waiting to react to its symptoms. Obama expects years of recession and to be paying for this economic disaster even a decade from now.
He has already made bluntly clear some milestones such as out of "Mission Accomplished", into the only war we have any business being in, restoration of international relations all over the world, talking to our 'enemies', a long term economic agenda, ethics in government, and closing the American concentration camp in Guantanamo. Clinton never had such clear objectives when he took power.
It will be most interesting to see how well Obama achieves his long term objectives AND continues to define new ones. Whereas Clinton could respond decisively to Saddam (having almost drive Saddam from power), hopefully, Obama will also avert other problems before those problems fester.
Top of my list? The spread of nuclear weapons which has been all but encouraged by America this past decade by not talking to others, by viewing the world in black and white (ie axis of evil), and by subverting another international treaty - the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. One problem that cannot be solved by a responsible response. An example of a problem that must be solved long before it happens. Clinton was not very good at this. First impressions suggest Obama is looking farther ahead.