Oh man, its been a long election. Coming out of the 2000s, America thought they just needed a place holder. The policy differences, as enumerated by the debates between George W Bush and Al Gore, were minimal and poorly argued.
Its a different day, similar to John F Kennedy defeating the Vice President Richard Nixon, people rose up to to demand change in a world that scarcely resembled the time that Dwight D. Eisenhower had chaperoned. President Elect Barrack Obama in many ways defeated the establishment in a time when such was most needed. To first, win his seat in the Senate from Blair Hull, a big money financier, through serendipity. Then to win the closest primary contention in history from Hilary Clinton through grit, organization and fund raising prowess, to finally receive a mandate over the republican party in his defeat of John McCain.
Here are a list of wrongs over the past 50 years that I hope are made right under President Obama:
1) The Drug War: End it. Decriminalize or legalize Marijuana. This makes social and fiduciary sense.
2) Normalize Relations with Cuba: There is no reason not to, other than to please a small group of Cuban-Americans in Southern Florida. We already conduct normal business with Chine and Vietnam, why not Cuba?
3) Focus on Infrastructure: Power distribution needs to be overhauled. Bridges need to be rebuilt. Levies need to be fortified. Rails need to be prioritized. Nuclear, wind and solar power stations need to be built. And even refineries, pipelines, and new oil platforms need to be constructed.
4) Foreign Policy must be revised: More focus on soft-handed good will with a clearly stated mandate to intervene in other countries affairs that makes sense from an American perspective as well as from the perspective of our closest allies.
5) Defense: Emphasis needs to be placed on empowering intelligence gathering through human assets and less emphasis on large military installations, guns and bombs. We can do more with less by having an information advantage.
6) Consistent Free Trade: Putting up barriers on steal and agriculture does not make sense. Maintaining the facilities to ensure American food production and steal production does not necessarily mean needing to subsidize these uncompetitive industries.
7) Higher Education: Providing alternatives to College education, while making sure everyone has the ability to fund needed training to be productive and successful. This goes for continuing education as well, to retrain unemployed workers for high demand industries.
8) Preventive focus on Health care: Providing health care for youth while also supporting new biometric driven devices to identify health problems early without burdening the limited health care resources.
9) Public Education: Providing education that is both comprehensive and with a renewed focus on the sciences. No Child Left Behind and other purely myopic quantitative metrics have not served us well.
10) Focus on Civil Institutions and not Government Institutions: AmeriCorp should be emulated for a variety of industries the government currently focuses on. The future for typically Government provided services should be public and private partnerships, with decisions being made by non-political stakeholders and whenever possible be decentralized to a state or community level.
There is more than that, but even if a third of these things are accomplished, it will be amazing. Obama has a mandate to fix a lot of what is wrong with America these days, here's to hope for change.
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