Summary
Having seen off the Hard Man of the Democratic party, [Barack Obama] must now defeat the Hard Man of the Republican party in November. (Clinton promised to "obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel; Senator John McCain has proposed threatening North Korea with "extinction.") But it will be hard for Obama to lose while the United States is plunging into a deep recession and the Republican candidate is still shackled to the Bush administration's war in Iraq.
So Obama gets the presidency -- and then what? A longish honeymoon, in all probability, while Americans congratulate themselves on having transcended the racist legacy of their past, which means that Obama will have a better chance than most new presidents to change the way things work. Moreover, he will probably be able to depend on Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Barack Obama has said very little about this during his campaign (and [Hillary Clinton], haunted by her failure to reform health care in her husband's first term as president, has said even less). But the fact that about one-sixth of the American population has no access to high-quality medical care is an astonishing failure in a rich democracy, and Obama has travelled enough to see it for the scandal that it is.See the full content of this document
Extract
Obama Should Make Health Reform Job No. 1
Gwynne Dyer
On the assumption that President Barack Obama survives for a full four-year term -- for it is generally assumed that, as the first African-American president, he will face a higher-than-average risk of assas...See the full content of this document
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