Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, October 16, 2008 2:39:47 AM
The Fog
If Obama takes office in January 2009, he will face a daunting set of
challenges in the world. After the knife-fight of this presidential
election, he and his team will need to take a deep breath and reflect.
The temptation to excoriate the policies of one of the most unpopular
presidents in history as a means of winning office was natural. The
fierce battle Obama had to fight to secure the nomination in the first
place created cleavages within the Democratic foreign policy elite that
have further complicated the development of a coherent and consistent
approach to national security. And the bitterness of the debate over
the Iraq war has distorted the thinking of almost every political
leader and many an analyst. Between an Obama election and inauguration,
the new team will have to make up the ground the campaign has lost in
thinking through its policies on the issues it will have to tackle from
its first moment in office, for there is reason to fear that many of
the current default policies are mistaken. The world has changed a
great deal since the Clinton years, and even then the Clinton foreign
policy was far from successful. Obama and his team will have a very
short time to adjust their ideas to the world as it is now.