Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States—the first African American to hold the office—on January 20, 2009. The new Congress whose term starts this January again has Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It will be the first time since 1993, when Bill Clinton became president, for a congressional term to start with both houses of Congress and the White House all to be under Democratic control. Will President Obama exercise suprapartisan leadership, or will the Democratic leadership in Congress use the party's legislative majority to keep up its partisan approach?
The top priority for the new administration will be dealing with the unprecedented crisis in the economy. It will be crucial to come up with effective measures for stabilization of the financial system. In view of the extremely large role the automobile industry and its supporting industries play in providing jobs, attention will focus on the deliberations by the White House and Congress on measures to aid the Big Three automakers.
The Obama team has announced a "green New Deal" aimed at creating jobs and dealing with global warming, featuring the following policies:
In foreign policy, the Obama administration is expected to stress multilateralism, to undertake a responsibly paced withdrawal from Iraq, and to strengthen efforts to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. Obama has spoken of the need for direct dialogue even with "rogue states," and attention will focus in particular on his administration's approach to Iran, which has been pursuing a nuclear development program in disregard of UN Security Council resolutions. Given the urgency of dealing with the economic crisis, meanwhile, it seems inevitable that trade policy will become a lesser priority.
