Suggestions for Obama's Next Two Years

Like many readers of Huffpost, I was deeply moved by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, but disappointed and surprised by some of what followed during his first two years in office. With little experience and no real record of achievement or identification with a particular case, Obama managed to present himself as a credible candidate in part by excellent management of a $750 million campaign, and by demonstrating impressive intelligence, sensitivity, humor and charisma in a series of campaign events and competitive primary and general election presidential debates. This all came together at a moment when the country was both ready and anxious to connect in a deeper way with the diversity of its own population, and toward the end of the campaign, was facing a chilling financial crisis.

When people look at the ledger of what they thought they were getting, and what has actually transpired, their results will vary, depending upon their own interests and values. For me, like many of my friends, there has been plenty to like and to not like, and much in between. Looking strictly forward, here are a few things I would like to see in the next two years, running up to the 2012 election.

1. Find some type of coherent and believable narrative that explains how the US will become more competitive and solvent over the next decade. Don't treat this as a halfhearted PR exercise, but as something important. Spend more time on this than on micromanaging the occupation of Afghanistan. Try at least to listen to some of the administration critics in terms of economics policies before embracing the conventional wisdom from Goldman Sachs and other establishment insiders.
2. Deal with the challenges of making higher education and health care more affordable. Some of the modest reforms of student loan programs were helpful, but not really sufficient to take the country where it needs to go. Your 2010 health care reform has good elements, but after pandering to PhRMA, the AMA, hospitals and insurance companies, not much in the way of cost control. The cost of health care has become a national competitiveness issue, and you need to be do a better job of understanding and explaining what that means, what it will take to get costs under control, and why this is in everyone's longer term interest. As a practical matter, some reforms will require rationing access to some types of treatments and care, and other reforms will involve changes in business models. One area where costs can be cut without rationing is to change the business model for drug development -- by de-linking drug prices from R&D incentives. (More context here and here). The reforms to make higher education more affordable could take all sorts of forms, and even if the Administration doesn't have the answers now, it needs to have a more visible strategy to come up with a strategy.
3. Get a clue about innovation policies. In the first two years, the Administration has allowed big established corporate interests to define innovation policies in ways that run counter to new thinking about the value and importance of openness and collaboration. Tell your own staff that they can't rely on Pfizer (share prices have fallen steadily for the past decade), Microsoft (even with considerable monopoly power, share prices have been flat for the past eight years), General Electric (Share price fell from 42 to 18 over the past 3 years) and big movie studios to do all of their thinking on these issues. Around the margins you have some talented staff that understands the opportunities, but no one in a highly visible position who seems to speak for the administration on innovation policy with any real insight. One challenge here is to understand and manage the benefits of greater access to knowledge, the freedom to innovate, and open collaborative models of innovation, and also come to grips with the challenges of creating sustainable models to fund or reward open innovation.
4. Lighten up on the demagogic statements about intellectual property protection. Many politicians don't have any real insight to the economy, current or future, and they use speeches about foreigners stealing our intellectual property largely as an empty public relations ploy to appear to have answers to our worsening economy. As a side benefit, pandering to a relatively small number of politically active intellectual property owners attracts campaign contributions. But upon closer examination, the argument that governments can create jobs through tougher rules for global intellectual property rights is full of holes. In the past 16 years, a large number of new trade agreements and treaties have already vastly changed global norms to protect intellectual property, and if anything, have gone too far in some areas. The rules for intellectual property are important, but do not benefit from simple minded analysis and ham handed policies.

   As a case in point, in the 1990s, the European Union adopted a directive to create new intellectual property rights in facts assembled in databases. The US rejected the new intellectual property right, and considers facts to be in the public domain. The EU change took place in 1996. According to an EU evaluation of the Directive, by 2004 the U.S. lead in the database market increased, and Europe fell farther behind. Why? Among other things, the U.S. law makes it easy to collect data in the first place. U.S. database companies figured out they were both consumers and sellers of facts, and that they would be hurt by the new intellectual property right. (For more on this, see Jamie Boyle's Financial Times column on the topic).

   Closer to home, policy makers might ask where most of the innovation has occurred in information markets over the past 20 years? On the monopolistic Microsoft desktop? Or on the open standards Internet platform? There are elements of the software and telecommunications network that can be closed and proprietary, but also parts that are best open and free. It's a complicated issue, and requires a different conversation than simply shouting "more" when it comes to intellectual property rights.

   In the area of patent policy, the administration seems either split (DOJ/USPTO split on gene patents) or adrift (damages, injunctions, border measures) or in a status quo holding pattern (federal march-in rights on government funded inventions). Ironically, it is a conservative U.S. Supreme Court that has created welcome new flexibilities to infringe patents when the infringements are in the public interest, in a case involving patents and eBay, the online auction system. It would be great if the Obama administration would investigate more systematic reforms that replace strong monopoly control intellectual property paradigms with new right-to-remuneration approaches, in areas where patent thickets make it nearly impossible to innovate without infringement.

   In the area of new medicines, strong intellectual property rights exist, but innovation is both extremely expensive and medically disappointing. With few new products and fewer still medically important ones, many experts believe it is time to redesign the system, in order to shift investments to more important innovations, expand access, and to create new incentives to openly share knowledge, materials, data and technologies. So far, the Obama Administration has taken its direction from big drug company lobbyists and blocked the important discussions about innovation at the World Health Organization. A change by the Administration would be exciting, and stimulate hope for positive changes in both innovation and the affordability of new medical technologies -- plus add some coolness points for a surprisingly dull administration.

5. Reform trade policy. After a disappointing start, the Obama administration could begin to shift trade policy away from secretive trade agreements that undermine democratic values and marginalize the role of the public in shaping outcomes, and both expand and shrink the notion of what constitutes an appropriate objective of trade policy.

   Some foreign policy issues, such as nuclear proliferation or seats on the US Security Council, should not be introduced into negotiations involving commercial trade policy, as was apparently the case in India in 2004-5, and rumored to have been the case in India in 2010.

   Trade policy involving public health is now often seen through the lens of Pfizer, Abbott or Merck, and is expressed through endless US government demands that our trading partners adopt tougher intellectual property rules and embrace higher drug prices. At the same time, the US government is trying to keep promises to provide treatments for AIDS in developing countries, and struggling in its war on cancer and other areas of medical innovation. If trade policy was refashioned through the lens of public health groups, it would focus on negotiations to have other countries share the costs of the global HIV treatment programs. It could also do more in terms of the types of medical R&D now supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), or to pay for R&D to develop new cures for various neglected diseases and conditions (tuberculosis, Chagas disease, pediatric cancer treatments, etc).

   Beyond medical innovation there are a large number of areas where public rather than private goods could be the focus of trade policy. Governments around the world have a collective interest in innovation in the area of clean energy, building databases on all sorts of topics, funding relief efforts for global catastrophes, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis or famines, and building certain types of global infrastructure. New global digital libraries could be expanded to include newer copyrighted works, with rights lawfully acquired from right owners for global access. Open scholarly journals provide the possibility of vastly expanding access to knowledge. These things all cost money, and are now under funded. Trade policy could be expanded to address the trade related aspects of this, for example, by supporting a new agreement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the supply of public goods.

6. Rethink competition policies. So far, the Obama administration has been a disappointment in enforcing competition laws. Right off the bat the Administration allowed the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger, harming both performers and audiences, and agreed to allow Oracle acquire the assets of MySQL in its merger with Sun, reducing competition in the enterprise database markets. It looks as if the Administration wants to allow Comcast to acquire a majority interest in NBC Universal. More generally, the Obama Administration has yet to stop any important merger. For an administration that once presented itself as brainy and analytical, decisions often seem political and driven by lobbyists.

   Just demonstrating some evidence that the antitrust laws mean something would be helpful, and then perhaps entering into a deeper conversation about the purpose and role of competition laws in the modern economy, where national governments often try to protect their own monopolies, in the belief that they will screw foreign consumers more than domestic consumers. Some of this analysis could involve actual analysis and gathering of empirical evidence to look at the performance of companies after competition reducing mergers, to see how the mergers have impacted consumers and shareholders, and influenced innovation itself. The Obama administration should also begin to develop legal theories to address a broader range of concerns about concentrations of economic power.

   When the Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger was under review, one of the objections to the merger was the undesirable effect of concentration on the freedom of artists to be themselves, without excessive and creativity killing corporate pressures. These are notes from one meeting between consumers and DOJ lawyers reviewing the merger.

   There was also considerable discussion about the impact of the proposed merger on cultural diversity and freedom. People talked about the "fear factor" associated with the proposed merger: few performers were willing to say anything about the merger publicly. One participant had quite a bit of information about problems that Pearl Jam faced doing live performances after previously speaking out against TM, and there was discussion of the impact of the Clear Channel consolation of radio stations on the quality of radio stations, and the consequences of losing independent stations. The XM/SR satellite merger had led to the elimination of many interesting stations. People didn't want a single entity determining what acts they would see, or telling acts what to do, or not do. Musicians from lesser known acts didn't want the TM/LN to exercise even more control than they do now. Concerns were also expressed over other aspects of freedom. If artists have to deal with a single entity for live performances, they would be even more vulnerable than now when they express views unpopular with management. People talked about the Dixie Chicks experience, for example.

   Unfortunately, these arguments had zero impact on the higher level DOJ officials who allowed the merger to take place.

   In the Comcast/NBC Universal merger, Susan Crawford, a former Obama White House official, has drawn attention to the impact of the merger on the diversity of news reporting, making the concrete and persuasive argument that post merger, MSNBC will likely be asked to tone down criticism of Fox News, in order to maintain Comcast carriage of Fox broadcast stations. See the discussion on Daily Kos here, and Susan Crawford's October 13, 2010 comments:

   Here's an undeniable problem: What happens to MSNBC post-merger? Right now, it's providing the only response to Fox News. Comcast won't want to irritate Fox -- you can't be a pay-TV distributor without Fox News, in the same way that you can't be a pay-TV distributor without ESPN. Fox News is a truck running downhill. It's a huge player. Comcast has already shown that it will fire reporters that irritate Fox. There are ways to soften MSNBC's edge without overtly firing people. Ease Rachel Maddow out, or upstairs, and replace her with Katie Couric. Find methods for cutting down on the hours of MSNBC commentary in favor of more lifestyle pieces. Let it be known that you'll rise more safely in the hierarchy if you don't make waves that reach the shores of Fox. Comcast is not a programming company at heart. It's a distribution company -- it believes that all the value it offers comes from its distribution network. It won't want to encourage any programming activity that interferes with the very popular, safe, incrementally-rising value of that distribution network.

   Economic concentration has all sorts of consequences that can be important. I can remember Aventis pressuring General Motors to end its participation in a lobby of "Businesses for Affordable Medicines," PacBell pressuring Intel to stop its opposition to ISDN rate increases, and more generally the tendency of big corporate entities to try to control every aspect of their environment, from the operation of standards bodies to the penetration and influence of governments and legislatures. Increased economic concentration can magnify the problems of excessive corporate power. These issues have always been obvious to the general public, but in recent decades, a determined and well financed public relations and lobbying effort by big corporate players has largely eliminated consideration of these non-price issues in merger reviews. The Obama administration should at the very least begin to revisit these issues that were once front and center in antitrust debates.
7. Dealing the "races to the bottom." I can remember when flying in airplanes was a remotely pleasant experience, even in economy class. With employers determined to book the cheapest flights, including my own, I find myself spending a great deal of time crammed into very small seating arrangements. With a mobile work force, few labor unions in the private sector, and the ability of firms to outsource jobs globally, firms under invest in skill-building training of workers. Employer funded private pensions are under funded. Vacation time in the United States is short, relative to what really matters in life. In these and in many other areas, governments can offset the negative impacts of competition on the quality of life by creating minimum standards or incentives to make us all better off. Some of this could be done through procurement policies. For example, the federal government could pay more to fly its own employees on commercial airlines that set some minimum standards for comfort, such as leg room, in commercial airlines. Or these standards could just be imposed on all carriers. I imagine the positive benefits for doing so would greatly outweigh the costs. During the Clinton Administration, Labor Secretary Robert Reich once proposed imposing effective mandates for employers to invest in worker training. These investments were thought to have three obvious benefits. First, once employers had invested in training workers, they would be less likely to lay them off, and let other employers gain the benefits of the training. Second, wherever they end up working, the higher skilled workers would tend to earn higher wages. Third, the U.S. economy would have a higher skilled work force, and become more productive and competitive. In this proposal, employers would benefit not only from the training they paid for, but the training that everyone else paid for.

   Some of the labor issues, such as vacation time, could be the subject of trade negotiations. After all, international competition is often the excuse for cutting all sorts of benefits and making workers worse off. Trade agreements are partly designed to deal with prisoner dilemma and free ridding issues.

   Having a visible strategy for starting to deal with these depressing races to the bottom would be welcome, useful, and create a sense of hope and optimism about the future.
   

8. Human Rights . One of the major surprises of this Administration has been its mixed record in the areas of human rights. There is plenty of room to criticize past actions (See for example here, here, here and even in the Obama Administration's own assessment to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, here), and lots of issues in the news today that raise eyebrows and concern. For example, on the one hand, the Department of State calls for "Five Key Freedoms of the Internet Age" (more here and here) and on the other hand, launches an appalling and often frightening response to the Wikileaks disclosures of diplomatic cables, including threats to use the widely criticized 1917 Espionage Act. Actions against potential intellectual property rights infringers apparently include super aggressive efforts to seize domain names -- actions that among other things reroute email and other communications. The US efforts against putative infringers of intellectual property and Wikileaks provide a road-map to any government seeking to suppress dissent and free speech.

   Our own area of work involves cases where human rights are highly relevant to access to medical inventions and other knowledge goods. Since 2001, the Bush and Obama Administration have failed to live up to promises that developing countries will have the freedom to use compulsory licensing and other flexibilities in intellectual property laws and agreements to "promote access to medicine for all." Much of this is done behind closed doors, secret from the public, but fully transparent to big pharmaceutical companies and the foreign governments on the receiving end of pressure. However, at other times, the U.S. actions are in the open.

   In countries like Thailand, this involves a considerable amount about of lying and subterfuge, and working hand-in-hand with right-wing drug company funded groups, to pressure the government when it tries to expand access to medicines for the 80 percent of the population that is excluded from private insurance markets.

   Recently Ambassador Betty King launched a bizarre, over the top, and highly inaccurate attack on the World Intellectual Property Organization's "Development Agenda," and threatened to kill the UN agency unless it abandons efforts to help developing countries implement balanced copyright and patent laws. The U.S. government is also working behind the senses to kill a proposal for a WIPO copyright treaty for exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities, on the grounds that it will set a precedent that would later be used to expand access to educational materials in developing countries. These are all examples of policies that undermine human rights.

   So what should the Obama administration do in the next two years? For starters, maybe someone should talk to Ambassador Betty King. The White House should think hard about how the 5 billion persons living with low incomes can afford new medicines, or what it will really take to expand access to accessible copyrighted works for the 273 million blind and visually impaired persons living in developing countries, and ask themselves, do we have people working in key federal agencies (USTR, USPTO, Department of State) who are really committed to the human rights of these people?
   

 

Follow James Love on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamie_love

Comments

[Dissapointed Progressive]

12:18 AM on 01/02/2011

"What he can do to fix it."

It is to laugh. If a man puts a loaded gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger and the gun functions as expected what can the man do to "fix it?" Similarlly, Obama's coddling of the bankers and his top down (a.k.a. trickle down) approach to fixing the economy are beyond redemption. His Presidency is a waste and a profound disappointment. He won what is called a transformational election and then transformed nothing (the wars, torture, economy, deregulation, Empire, "free" trade are all as in the Bush years). All he did was to destroy any belief or hope in activist governance. He is a total and absolute failure as you will all see when the bills for bailing out the top come due. Enjoy your $6.00 a gallon gas and $5,00 loaves of bread. P.S. I was deceived as well and voted for him.

[legaleagle4]

10:10 PM on 01/01/2011

Here's a suggestion for Obama's next two years: MAN UP, SIR!

[Shaun Hensley]

11:03 PM on 01/01/2011

You mean you want him to more boldly embrace his Republican pro business/anti-labor values?

[checkmoot]

09:55 PM on 01/01/2011

It seems that in some respects electing Obama was like electing Bush for a third term. Wars, torture, tax cuts for the rich,etc.

[Shaun Hensley]

11:04 PM on 01/01/2011

Reagan's eighth term.

[khepri]

07:20 PM on 01/01/2011

Very impressive list and supporting discussion! I would have liked to see you emphasize the wars and the hijacking of America by the MIC. That's right up there; maybe a linch-pin to the whole thing.

[peterg76]

05:29 PM on 01/01/2011

Obama doesn't lack ideas. He just doesn't want to do any of these things.

[votingthistime]

01:48 PM on 01/01/2011

Mr. Love, you have made very good suggestions. I would have thought the accomplishments of President Obama and the Democrats during the recent lame-duck session of Congress would have earned them less criticism. The end of Don't Ask Don't Tell was particularly noteworthy. Many critics, myself included, who questioned the negotiating skills of the President, should now freely acknowledge that many of the objections that were made were premature in light of what has been accomplished. Let me be more specific: the extension of the tax cuts for the top 2% was not the one-sided giveaway I first thought it to be. Obama has shown himself to be up to the task of governing, and true to the thrust of his campaign promises. No one is perfect, but let's give credit where it is due.

[khepri]

07:23 PM on 01/01/2011

DADT is important; but its importance does not cancel Obama's monumental failures re. the wars and re. a national public option in health care---among many, many other sad disappointments. One accomplishment--one Hail Mary at the death bed--does not guarantee entrance into heaven. This President has been a craven opportunist and disloyal to his base from day one. No single achievement--not even DADT--can excuse that.

[James Love]

07:23 PM on 01/01/2011

Obama has done plenty of good things over the past two years, and this might be a good topic for an essay by someone. It wasn't the point of this blog, which looks forward to the next two years. I personally wouldn't give the Administration much credit on the Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal. I didn't talk about taxes, but running these huge budget deficits and then extending the Bush tax cuts seems hard to justify, when the federal debt is nearly $14 trillion, and trending the wrong way.

[Shaun Hensley]

10:43 PM on 01/01/2011

He's not done 'plenty of good things'. He's been a colossal disappointment. If I wanted a Republican President, I would have voted for McCain.

[PTAOfficerforObama]

11:53 AM on 01/01/2011

Obama has let me down as a voter, To be fair he inherited a HUGE mess, but he is reverting to same old same old Washington tactics. I think your list is good, but should have listed get some advisors who are 180 degrees apart from Summers and Geithner...

[Gorn]

11:13 AM on 01/01/2011

What is Obamas problem? First he has no experience with anything, has never managed anything,
and has demontrated to anyones satisfaction, that he has no natural leadership skills. The second major problem is his advisors. No president in history has selected advisors as shallow in experience as he is. Only 6% of Obamas economic team have ever had a real job.The third and most concerning is Obamas Galactic superiority complex. It is truly beyond him to believe anyone on earth has the knowledge and gifted insight as he has. They will all be his downfall.

[thruseer]

09:18 AM on 01/01/2011

I agree with you on every point. You take the long view and the thoughtful, analytical and rational approach. I like it. When I voted for Obama, I expected him to staunchly champion this same type of approach to government.

Unfortunately, a huge proportion of voters in the US are way too undereducated and averse to complexity to even understand your proposals. Vast numbers of them flop in front of the TV, absorb and internalize the insidious nonsense of Fox "news" channel, and uncritically internalize the political views purveyed there. They like the simple-minded sound bite packaging of political propaganda. These people allow FOX to seduce them almost subliminally into voting against their own best interests. Our government is being hijacked by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, O'Reilly, Hannity and the various Barbie dolls on FOX "news" channel.

I'm no longer hopeful about Obama governing rationally, with policies that will support the middle class in the long-term. He rolls too easily when it is expediant. But it would be a big mistake for the left to abandon the Democrats to "send a message". The message they send would allow election of a very destructive Republican government, of quick-buck profiteers and character assassins. We will see a lot of that following the recent mid-term election. The US needs the constructive potential of the Democrats and the left.

[Eileenla]

09:13 AM on 01/01/2011

The challenge facing any politician today is enormous, because the problems we're confronting are symptoms of the coming collapse of an outmoded social order of control, domination and exploitation of the many by the few. This order has been in place for millennia; while its structure has changed its intentions have never wavered. Because this system also attempts to dominate and exploit the larger landscape of reality that contains and supports us all, it MUST fail beneath the weight of its own false premise: that the short-term freedoms and rights of the individual are superior to the responsibility we each bear for the long term health and happiness of our species, of the web of life that contains us and of the planetary life support systems on which we all depend. All the above proposals are attempts to reassert what's best for humanity as a collective, but this isn't something to be forcibly legislated. It's something to be REALIZED on a soul level by us, then implemented freely as we become I creakingly aware that our unfettered pursuit of freedom and "success" without that responsibility means our own death.

[artleads]

01:00 PM on 01/01/2011

After becoming familiar recently with "Endgame" by Derrick Jenson, "Nature and Madness" by Paul Shepard, and "The Abstract Wild" by Jack Turner, there's increased reason to believe what you say. But I still think we must not only wait for the system to collapse, but also work unrelentingly to create better alternatives, even within the current order of things. Even if, as perhaps with global warming, it's too late to change the phenomenon, we can't do enough to enact "soft landing" remedies and mitigations that can save or millions of lives. The article, therefore, seems useful and constructive.

[Gaylord P Farqua]

01:01 PM on 01/01/2011

Brilliant response. Sadly, the thought s behind your words are increasingly lost on far to many Americans who not enjoying the fruits of a good educational system. Each year we drop further and further down world rankings as the opportunities for quality learning at all levels becomes less and less available to all but the rich.  Unless there is a dramatic improvement in all aspects of education we will fail as a nation and take our place in history next to the rest of has been empires who were also destroyed by corruption and ignorance. It is incredible that the majority of voters in the last election  swept into office candidates who openly espouse the removal of the separation of church and state and are ready to set in motion plans to reduce federal support of education. These new "spending cutters" are operating at the state level as well slashing educational budgets to lower property taxes and curry favor with their political base. Unless a complete overturn of all of those who seek to continue dumbing down America is accomplished in 2012, we are in real danger of losing more generations of children to substandard education.

[Eileenla]

04:01 PM on 01/01/2011

I agree that education is a huge problem today. We're so busy teaching people WHAT to think we've lost sight of the aim of teaching them HOW to think. My sense is this too must change sooner rather than later. As the sheer volume of information expands beyond our capacity to absorb and memorize it, the educational system will have to adjust to this change accordingly. All systems are collapsing at the same time - a perfect storm in the wake of the evolution of human consciousness.

[repubx]

08:44 AM on 01/01/2011

Obama has to do only two things to get my vote in 2012:

1) Get out of Iraq

2) Get out of Afghanistan

Since it seems unlikely he will do either, I will be voting for somebody else - if I bother to vote at all.

[James Love]

10:19 AM on 01/01/2011

Well, of course, dealing with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The presidencies of Carter (Iran), Reagan (Central America), Bush 41 (Iraq), Bush 43 (Afghanistan and Iraq) were for durable times consumed by foreign wars or crises. Clinton managed to put off such adventures until the 1999 Kosovo war. Among other things, wars can be huge distractions, and in some ways, excuses to neglect other parts of a President's job.

[artleads]

01:17 PM on 01/01/2011

Distractions abound. Progressives should focus on as few things as possible, and stick with them like a dog with a bone. Among these few issue, Net Neutrality, and Safeguarding unscathed Social Security and Medicare seem like the most important (although I'm open to other suggestions). But these, plus all the issues you mention, are systemically related, and are best dealt with by a holistic strategy. E.g., A guest worker immigration program (and legalizing the current 12 million undocumented immigrants, as in the DREAM ACT, etc.) puts a lot more money in Social Security, strengthens our skilled-labor and military-recruit pool, and supplies a labor force to renew America's infrastructure.

[elijlyn]

10:50 AM on 01/01/2011

Lost my vote too, nothing short of a progressive revolution will get it back.

[NC2]

08:42 AM on 01/01/2011

Good points, all need to be addressed. But, don't forget a well thought out energy plan. Should be close to number 1. We've been promised this since the '70s and we are no closer than before. Need to prove the nation is capable of moving ahead without a crisis.

[artleads]

01:24 PM on 01/01/2011

Progressives should focus on as few things as possible, and stick with them like a dog with a bone. Among these few issue, Net Neutrality, and Safeguarding unscathed Social Security and Medicare seem like the most important (although I'm open to other suggestions). All key issues, such as energy and environmenrt are systemically related, and are best dealt with by a holistic strategy. E.g., A guest worker immigration program (and legalizing the current 12 million undocumented immigrants, as in the DREAM ACT, etc.) puts a lot more money in Social Security, strengthens our skilled-labor and military-recruit pools, and supplies a labor force to create a green infrastructure. And so on, as regards the need to bundle (not bungle) the WEB OF ISSUES.

[Shaun Hensley]

10:47 PM on 01/01/2011

Labor issues should be front and center. You don't even list them at all. So right away, we are working at cross-purposes.

[dfdougherty]

08:29 AM on 01/01/2011

You make many good points but the hard reality is the Obama is not up to the job. The next two year's are going to be a muted repeat of the last two. A truly transformational President may be possible in 2012, let's all hope we have that option available.

[anxiouscanuck]

04:21 PM on 01/01/2011

Ye gods and little fishes (the nearest I can come to an acceptible expletive).

"A truly transformational President may be possible in 2012, let's all hope we have that option available"

The full weight of entrenched power and obscene amounts of money have been against any form of "transformation. These forces will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo. Why do you think that the GOP states categorically that they will work tirelessly to ensure that Obama will be a one term president? He knows what needs to be done to reform the corrupt system and from where I sit, he is doing his best. He said it best,"I cannot do this alone. I need your help."

[Shaun Hensley]

10:48 PM on 01/01/2011

You are assuming they want him to fail because they are in fear of his policies and not because they merely want their own figurehead.

[lizt]

05:13 AM on 01/01/2011

This writer is just another person standing on the sidelines and telling the president how to do his job better. It reminds me of my favorite Teddy Roosevelt quote:
"It's not the critic who counts; not the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

[ampdem]

01:39 AM on 01/01/2011

I didn't notice anything in the article sugesting that it might be a good idea to let some of the Bush tax cut extentions, expire.

[nancytheragingliberal]

08:09 AM on 01/01/2011

A: Yes, I noticed that too. Sure, borrow 800 bill. from China, so billionaires can have their tax cuts and their money, money they don't need for the next two years. Outrageous.