The Long Crisis

Poor President Obama. His role and success as a politician and leader demands for him to be optimistic about the future of America. What else can he do but say to all Americans and to the world that “yes, we can”? I wonder what he really thinks? How he balances the difficultly of actually dealing with America’s challenges against his role as cheerleader in chief

Obama must feel compelled to say that yes we can overcome the challenges presented by a damaged financial system, our dependence upon foreign oil imports, the need to borrow vast amounts of money from foreign nations, from the consequences of climate change, the collapse of the automotive industry, the fact of peak oil. And that’s just a partial list.

What is a charismatic and extremely popular leader to do? Speak the truth about how the world is irrevocably changing, and not in the US’s favor, and face certain and immediate political fallout, or talk up the many programs designed by the Obama team to paper over the problems and buy the US a little more time. The audacity of the President’s hopeful speech with its promises of better and brighter days ahead has its own dangers.

Americans are not known for their patience nor for their humility. Those lucky people who live in the “greatest nation ever on the face of the earth” want to continue with the American way of life as it has been for the past generation or two. For most Americans giving up the good old happy motoring days, easy credit, and the excesses of a population representing about 5% of the world’s population consuming about 25% of the world’s resources is unthinkable. As our clueless leaders have said many times the American way of life is nonnegotiable.

Unfortunately, for the America people and for President Obama the American way of life is not
nonnegotiable, in a changing world of scarce resources and energy inputs that are no longer cheap it is unsustainable.

President Obama is a smart guy. I wish him well as he tries his best to solve the multiple challenges faced by America. But in his audacious speech he can not longer seriously talk about the mess he has inherited. Even though he has been in office only a few months he has been super active and has placed his own mark on the problems. A good example of this is the War in Afghanistan where his increase in American forces commanded by a new general of his chosing makes Afghanistan his war. One that IMHO will end very badly for Obama and for the US. It is never wise to engage in a war that you can not win yet American pride, even with Obama, seems to out rank a wiser course of non military action.

Obama’s problem is this. He has rapidly moved on a large number of challenges in a short period of time. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the virtual government takeover of GM and Chrysler, his present effort to secure new powers for the Fed, to reform healthcare, the list is a long and complicated one. And now they are all Obama’s problems. The success or failure of his team’s proposals and plans already in play will probably be largely known by the midterm elections. There is a huge risk of failure on a number of fronts, especially on one which President Obama has had the most to say about, the economy.

In a way President Obama has little choice as to what he says. One of his most important tasks as President is the be the nations cheerleader. But the sheer audacity of President Obama’s hopeful speech may well come back to bite him. With the absolute convergence of a financial meltdown, climate change, and peak oil happening during the Obama first term the prospects of any President, no matter how smart he may be, over coming events is small. Really small. Probably impossible. It is highly unlikely that President Obama will be able to achieve the results that he seems to be so confident about in his speeches.

I say this as so far the President’s team seem to be trying with all their might to repair old systems and institutions that no longer work. They are trying to take us back to the go go days of 2006. Obama’s speech reflects this. Does he know that with the convergence of disasters returning to the America of the past is an impossible task, one doomed to eventual failure? Or does he see no choice, that in his judgement the American people can not handle the truth? That a reduced standard of living is in our near future?

I do not know. I can only hope that behind the audacious speech and visible actions there is an Obama team working on a plan B. If not, there is disaster for Team Obama that will probably occur as early as the 2010 elections. And his own Armageddon may occur in 2012. Sometime very soon positive results must follow all of the talk and vigorous action. Americans are not known for their patience.

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