10-21-2008, 03:15 AM
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What kind of a president would Obama be?
MSNBC published a look at what the McCain and the Obama administrations would look like
Here's the take on Obama-
Quote:
For all Barack Obama's talk about change, there are signs that in style — if not substance — a new White House under Democrat Obama would operate much like the current one under President George W. Bush.
Think discipline, efficiency and secrecy. These are hallmarks of Obama's campaign, just as they have been for the last eight years in the leak-proof, tightly managed Bush administration.
Obama, like Bush, demands an orderly shop. (His) style as a candidate predicts a chief executive officer-style president, one who delegates rather than micromanages.It's the same model as for Bush, the nation's first president with a masters in business administration. It derives in part from something the two men have in common: natural political gifts that set them on a path to the White House that took shortcuts around much government experience. That means policy experts are needed for heavy lifting.
Obama's two daughters, at ages 10 and 7, would be the youngest residents to roam the White House since 9-year-old Amy Carter tagged along with President Jimmy Carter and his wife in 1977. Obama's poise at the podium would end an era of water-cooler jokes about presidential malapropisms.
On issues, Obama's approach on everything from Iraq to health care would look much different from the last eight years. He has pledged to preside over an unconventional style of politics and policy development virtually blind to party, an intriguing possibility even if hard to trust after years of divisive partisanship.
Obama, like Bush, relies most on a small, hard-to-penetrate inner circle. It's been a successful formula, but can irk power players in his party and in Congress, who sometimes see Team Obama as too insular.
Obama's discipline is less about the importance of secrecy and more about making the organizational trains run on time, said Princeton University political historian Julian Zelizer.
Obama is known for his loyalty, as well as for preferring aides who keep their mind on the work and the attention on the boss. Know much about David Plouffe or Valerie Jarrett or Pete Rouse or Steve Hildebrand or Robert Gibbs or David Axelrod? These campaign masterminds could well soon have offices in the White House, but none has become a celebrity aide in the mold of Bill Clinton's James Carville or Bush's Karl Rove.
Regardless, Zelizer said, Obama will need to guard against abandoning his natural caution to launch a spree of legislative action right off the bat. Going too far to please Democrats excited about finally being in control again of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue could risk a backlash from the public, he said.
One issue that won't wait even until Inauguration Day is the battered economy.Obama supports immediate action, in a special post-election congressional session, to spend billions on new economic stimulus measures. His ideas: a moratorium on home foreclosures, tax breaks for job creation and small-business investment, penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts, an unemployment benefits extension, support for state and local governments, money for infrastructure construction, and doubled loan guarantees for automakers.
Beyond that, Obama has defined three big issues for the first 100 days of his presidency: working to bring combat troops home from Iraq in a little over a year, beginning a plan to achieve universal health care coverage, and getting started on a far-reaching energy plan.
But for a man whose candidacy got rocket fuel from his opposition to the decision to go into Iraq, the one promise Obama cannot afford to put off is the one to end the war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will find themselves in the Oval Office on Jan. 21, he says, being handed a new mission from their commander in chief "to end this war, responsibly and deliberately, but decisively."
To marshal public support for his agenda, he'll need to draw on his vaunted oratorical skills.
What kind of a president would Obama be? - Barack Obama News - MSNBC.com
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