Obama Experts Brief Members on Domestic and Foreign Policy, Challenges Near and Far

One of President Obama's principal challenges as he tries to deal with the current economic crisis is to get people thinking positively again, a member of his presidential transition team told a recent policy forum at Temple Micah.

Only when consumer confidence is restored will people feel the country is finally moving in the right direction, said Mark Gitenstein, a member of a panel on the domestic challenges facing the new administration.

Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist voice within the party, said the worldwide recession is the greatest challenge facing Obama.

In the weeks before Obama took office, Micah members received briefings on domestic and foreign policy at two policy forums similar to ones Micah sponsored following the 1992 election of Bill Clinton as president.

To do that, Obama must successfully implement at least some key elements of his agenda within his first year in office, said Karen Kornbluh, who was policy director for Obama's Senate office and author of 2008 Democratic Party Platform. She cited moving ahead of on some of Obama's proposals for health care reform, such as allowing people to carry their health insurance from one job or employer to another. Other priority elements of the administration agenda include global warming, government entitlement programs and immigration reform.

On foreign affairs, panelists noted that Obama has to restore America's prestige and standing abroad as well as reform international economic and financial institutions built up since the end of World War

II. Obama's challenge, stated Ellen Laipson of the Stimson Center, is to reverse the decline of American power brought about by the Bush Administration. In so doing, Obama will have to deal with Iran plus the rise of China and India.

Regarding Israel and the Middle East, the question is how much pressure Obama is willing to put on the Jewish state to make deals it does not want to make, said Stephen Weissman, a former New York Times reporter now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Obama is a practical guy," From concluded. "He wants things to work. He is willing to throw out anything that does not work." Daniel Brumberg, a professor at Georgetown University, concurred. "Obama comes across as a pragmatist, just as he has so far in making appointments to his administration."

In the end, From said, how Obama is eventually judged will depend on how successful his policies are in resolving U.S. and international challenges.

[By Jeffrey P. Cohn, from March-April 2009 Vine]