The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, takes the oath given by U.S. Supreme Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. during the inauguration ceremony in Washington, January 20, 2009.
(4 of 6)
Clinton, who can be spiky, has re-emerged as a natural diplomat. When she heard that Holbrooke and General David Petraeus had never met, she invited them over to her Washington home on a Friday night before the Inauguration. The two men spent two hours in front of a roaring fire with Clinton, getting to know each other, talking about the diplomatic and military division of labor in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clinton's was an Obamian gesture--enticing the lion to lie down with the lion--the sort of attention to detail that seems to have been replicated across the policymaking spectrum during the Obama transition.
It will be domestic, not foreign, policy that will occupy the President's attention for the next few months. The first order of business will be to shepherd the $825 billion stimulus package through Congress and ride herd on the additional $350 billion available to stabilize the banks. But the goal is to press an ambitious series of actions--policies that might have seemed impossible before the financial crash--across the board as quickly as possible. The quest for a national health-insurance system will debut with a major conference, bringing all the various players--including corporate America and the insurance companies--to the table in late winter or early spring. The hope is that a bill to provide universal access, as promised during the campaign, will nudge its way through Congress by next fall. Also coming in the first half of the year will be a comprehensive environmental policy, including some tough decisions on how to go about reducing carbon emissions. If Obama can accomplish any one of these, he will surprise a great many Washington skeptics.
In the latter days of the transition, there seemed an inclination to delay some of the splashy foreign trips that will, in the end, be among the most memorable moments of the Obama presidency. The President will go to Europe in April to attend the next G-20 meeting on the global economic crisis. The steady pitch of crises and atrocities will demand his attention. There are crucial decisions to be made about the pace of withdrawal from Iraq and how many U.S. troops to add in Afghanistan. (Asked about the persistent reports from the Pentagon that up to 30,000 more troops are scheduled for Afghanistan, a senior Obama aide said, "No--repeat, no--decision has been made about troop levels in Afghanistan, and anyone at the Pentagon who says otherwise should be fired.") But foreign policy developments seem destined to take some time, given the new President's proclivities: there will not be the macho kinetics of the Bush years nor the bang-bang nor the bellicose phrases like axis of evil. Obama was careful to avoid the phrase global war on terror in his Inaugural Address. Instead, there will be a steady drip-drip-drip of diplomacy, especially on neglected issues like nuclear proliferation. Even in the war zones, the Obama Administration will be talking relentlessly--trying to bring the nonextremist Taliban tribes into the Afghan government, trying to establish coalitions of Iraq's and Afghanistan's neighbors (including Iran) to help lower the tensions, hoping the steady accretion of talk and trust will bring the Israelis and Palestinians to a point where they can begin negotiating a real peace.