President Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to effect permanent and necessary change in the political culture of The United States of America. It won't be easy as he has readily acknowleged; but he seems to be the right man at exactly the right moment in history. He is the right man because he has a refined sense of history and understands the sense of destiny that traditionally has defined the American experience going back to the Puritans and their "City on a Hill." It is the right moment because like Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt he is taking office at a watershed time in American history. America needs a vision for the 21st Century and President Obama is the most visionary politician in recent memory. It is fitting that he cited George Washington in his inaugural remarks. It is fitting that he has studied Abraham Lincoln and to some extent has modeled himself after the "Great Emancipator." It is fitting that he assumes the presidency at a time of the greatest economic dislocation since Franklin D. Roosevelt began to lead the country out of the Great Depression.
Like F.D.R., his first priority will be saving the free-market system from the greed of unscrupulous speculators and politicians who failed to regulate markets because these same speculators were lining their political coffers. He has the benefit of knowing what did and did not work for the "New Deal." One agency that did work was the Security and Exchange Commission which is supposed to correct the worst excesses of the stock market. It is in place, but it failed recently under lax administration. President Obama must reform the bureacracy and practice vigorous administration. This cuts across party lines and is a matter of simple government competency. President Obama is a competent man who must insist on performance from his government.
Wealth, however, comes not from government jobs but rather from private industry jobs. The new president has already begun to address this. Real jobs can come from exploiting varieties of clean energy sources. Nuclear energy, for instance, should be high on his list of clean energy sources. As a Democrat he can get bi-partisan support for new energy directions. As a Democrat he could also be in a position to revive the American logging industry. These are real jobs in a nation with an abundance of timber. Intelligently managed, logging could bring a renaissance of jobs in the housing industry. President Obama is a highly intelligent man.
Intelligent Americans also support the strict separation of church and state, a bedrock Jeffersonian principle which Americans forget at their peril. The previous administration seemed to let a cracker-barrel religious fanaticism stand in the way of stem-cell research and real sex-education. It claimed the hand of divine providence in its self-righteous foreign policy. Americans have found safety in religious diversity and a "practical godliness" since the very beginnings of the English-speaking experience in the New World. President Obama seems well-grounded in his own beliefs and understands the necessary separation of church and state.
Finally, America should return to its historic reliance on the citizen-soldier. Since Vietnam, the all-volunteer American military has created a separate military culture that violates a fine tradition. If Americans are in a military action, they are all in it together. Americans have never liked to wear uniforms or take orders. Americans have always, however, responded to military crisis by lending themselves to the uniform. It would take a master politician to bring Americans back to some concept of national service, but maybe the events 21st Century will demand it. President Obama has already suggested that Americans make common cause to achieve common goals. President Obama is a master politician to have come this far.
So, America has turned to a new generation of leadership by electing a new type of leader. A leader reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the people he leads. Americans are a proud and free people. President Obama seems to understand that pride can become hubris and that freedom is fragile. He reads widely. He speaks grandly. He is a reflective thinker. The President of the United States may be the most influential individual in the world. President Barack Obama has the intellect and the oratory skills to lead the country and the world to what Winston Churchill called the "broad sun-lit uplands."