A Most Promising Start For Obama

[babylonsister]

A Most Promising Start For Obama
Obama and his advisers seem more focused on fixing what's broken than on grinding ideological axes.

by Stuart Taylor Jr.

Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009


Like a great many other Americans at this singular moment in history, I have rarely been so alarmed about the state of the world -- and have never been so hopeful about the promise of a new president.

Standing amid hundreds of thousands of celebrants between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument at the "We Are One" concert on Sunday, and watching Barack Obama's inaugural address two days later, my family and I felt the thrill that raised so many spirits. Despite the dark economic times, the wars, the terrorist threat, the health care mess, the impossibility of quickly surmounting any of these crises -- despite even the overarching fear that America's best days may be behind us -- hope was ascendant.

No human being could possibly meet the soaring expectations that electrified those inaugural crowds. But our new president may have what it takes to uplift the country as much as any president could.

I worried in a pre-election column that Obama's down-the-line liberal voting record and associations with some extremists did not give a centrist like me much confidence that he would "resist pressure from Democratic interest groups, ideologues, and congressional leaders to steer hard to the left."

But since then he has done much to fulfill the hope expressed in that same column that he might prove to be "the pragmatic, consensus-building, inspirational Obama who has been on display during the general election campaign."

He has chosen a talented, experienced, pragmatic team of national security and economic advisers who seem more focused on fixing what's broken than on grinding ideological axes.

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http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090124_3432.php