After tiring year, 2009 will be remarkable

January 15, 2009 by Chelsea Milko 

Obama’s promises exhausting but ennobling

 

January is in full motion. Resolutions are nearing their breaking point. Holiday retailers are commiserating over dismal revenue reports. America (and the world) is preparing to inaugurate Barack Obama as its 44th president. After a 2008 chock full of buyouts, bailouts and freak-outs, what manner of madness will the last year of the 00’s yield?

Brace yourselves. You know the recessionary funk the world is experiencing? Like a post-holiday midsection spills over the trouser waistline, the current economic anemia will spill over to other sectors too. To echo an exhausted phrase from the presidential campaign trail, that means the financial woes of WallStreet will hammer Main Street (and emerging world economies) harder than ever. 

Corporate bankruptcy, rising unemployment and mounting consumer debt will define 2009 as a sluggish successor to the tyrannical 2008. Continuation of this contagion will prevent Washington policymakers, most of whom subscribe to the “Stimulus Package of the Month” program, from affecting any noticeable relief. Argh! 

All this talk of conditions not witnessed since the Great Depression is, well, depressing to hear. So, allow me to lift the mood with an optimistic outlook on Obama’s first year in the Oval Office.

One reason to bust out the bubbly this year is just on the horizon. Barbie turns 50? 

While it is true that the birthday of the disproportionately proportioned clotheshorse of the toy world is worth raising your tea cup to, I have something else in mind. I’m talking about the roaring crowds and tearing faces that will be commonplace on Jan. 20 when America welcomes its first black president to the White House and hangs up its Bush bashing gloves (for now). 

Following his inauguration, Obama will begin the daunting tasks of jumpstarting the economy through job creation and tax cuts, pulling our embattled military out of Iraq, turning up the heat on al Qaeda in Afghanistan, closing the deplorable Guantánamo Bay compound in Cuba, restoring strained diplomatic relationships abroad, investing in renewable energy technologies, providing affordable health-care to 48 million uninsured Americans and phew! Are you still reading this? 

Anyway, his to-do list is as mighty as the scary “liberal elite” media Sarah Palin was always so quick to chastise. To achieve even a one-fourth of what has been promised will require the Obama administration to cash in on its political capital and spin the euphoric honeymoon period into an FDR-style 100 days of rapid response. 

In nearly two years and with $750 million raised, the Obama campaign machine skillfully orchestrated a fluid grassroots network founded upon inspired volunteers, small-scale donations and the technologicaly savvy. 

His administration must tap into the energy of Obamamania and use it to secure the confidence and patience of in debt, out of work and discouraged Americans who want the kind of fast-acting relief not found in a Mylanta bottle. In Washington, he must wrestle with a divided Congress which still reels from the repeated blows of cowboy capitalism and political scandal. 

The speedy appointment of top-level cabinet officials in recent weeks revealed the president-elect’s steady, analytical decision-making style. It is an encouraging start for a presidency that will spend 2009 rehabbing the banking industry, housing sector and American trust in its lawmakers. 

Fortunately, the Obama fan base continues to expand. He can now add one new recruit, my McCain-supporting Republican father. “You know,” he admitted to me the other day, “this Obama is now my president. He’ll be a great one too.” 

Like my father, I am hopeful the 44 president will act upon the rather-reaching rhetoric and impossible promises that were floating about during the campaign cycle. With Obama captaining repair work on America’s ailing economy and its international position, 2009 is shaping up to be another historical year.