As we speak, Barack Obama, 44th president of the United-States and first Afro-American ever elected as the head of the country is preparing his governement that will take over Bush’s on the 20th of January.
For those of you of understand french, i came across a nice statement reading the news on the net : «A l’heure où nous célébrons la victoire, nous savons que les défis de demain sont les plus importants de notre existence – deux guerres, une planète en péril, la plus grave crise financière depuis un siècle». It basically says that we are facing the greatess challenges of our existance, two wars, a planet in peril and an economic crisis.
Many obstacles are in lines for Obama. The economic recession is almost inevitable now and the Americans are asking for social changes in health care and education. If we look at the dominating issues of the last campain, economy ranks in first. With an unemployment rate around 6% and the annonced recession, jobs are needed and money needs to be put back in circulation. Yesterday, worldwide economy indicated that investors were not that trusting of Obama rise to presidency; Europeen, Canadian and American stock market taking a plunge. Only on the Asian market did we see a rise in the stocks. To reverse this tendency, a lot of work is to be done, knowing that most government welcomed warmly Obama as United-State next president. Obama might have won the confidence of his fellow countrymen and worldwide leaders, he still need to gain the support of the industries.
Obama promises to removes troops in Irak with a 16 month plan of action. A social movement for the good of his troops and the improvement in the political situation of that area of the globe? Maybe it is part of the answer. But I firmly believe that the real reason lies elsewhere. With a social deficit of 500 000 000 000$ (men, that’s a lot of zeros), the money to pay for that debt won’t come in waging war in some foreign country were victory seem virtually unachievable. Obama need that money to operate the social changes in health care (4th main concern in the campaign, after economy, Irak and terrorism) and education that he promised.
As for environment, no need to say that he can’t do worst than the business as usual enforced by the actual President. It’s hard to say if Obama will have either the time or the means to actually improve United-States standard in environment since he will be very busy elsewhere. Let’s hope that the slogan of his campaign «Yes we can» goes further than simply reorganising his own country. Let’s hope that it’s a new era were politic with United-States will be more fluent and that they assume their role as leader, especially in environment, and negotiate with the rising China for measures to mitigate their environment future impacts.
To the future President, all my wishes of good luck