And how would Obama and McCain deal with them differently?
The economy is unlikely to have recovered by next year and place of America in the world’s economic order is flux. I do not see any President have any great ideas here.
Global warming. Obama is more likely to have cap and trade be entirely auctioned and to participate in global agreements, but really not much difference here.
International affairs. Iraq has been well covered in many threads and related to that is that I think Obama would redeploy more to Afganistan. Iran may have stopped their denied weapons program (or not) but they are still a threat for restarting it and still act as if they have designs on regional hegemony. How do each handle them (other than talking). How will each deal with Putin’s version of a Russia resurgent in power and in anti-American rhetoric? How will each deal with the various crises in Africa.
Would either work towards immigration reform or has the recent debacle made that a third rail for one or both?
Supremes. What kind of judges would each of them get through the process?
Will either get healthcare reform done in any form?
Which will be the biggest issues of each hypothetical administration?
I think many of the issues you raise are actually part of the larger issue that the next president will face: America’s diminished status in the world. I think the next president will be the first post-hegemony president and that ultimately history will judge him/her by how soft a landing s/he will be able to prepare for America’s inevitable decline.
I would think that a president would consider it his responsibility to reverse the trend. There are many qualities I want in a leader, but “accepting the inevitable” isn’t one of them.
Obviously, I don’t think that is possible. I think we are in a situation akin to that of the great European powers after WWII, some nations were able to adapt to the new reality while others had a harder time of it. Whether the next president can see the trend and prepare the nation for its next stage is what I think will be the greatest challenge s/he faces.
America’s diminished status in the world? Next stage? I certainly would like to see some sort of evidence to that effect.
I’m not saying that we have not lost face, god knows Bush has done horrible things to the public perception of America.
I’m not saying the economy’s in good shape. It’s not, but it’s nothing we haven’t been through before.
What, exactly, is this ‘new reality’, and what, exactly, is post-hegemony? Is China going to replace the US somehow? India? Some strange resurgent EU mutation?
And some would say we’re already dealing with them. The next president will have to deal with constitutionally reshaping our perceived image around the globe but most importantly to the people living right here on our soil. He will have to have the ability to unite, and inspire. To put into action what others have failed to. I mean the last 8 years haven’t been all bad…just mostly bad.
No one is a perfectly acceptable answer. Of course, in the past, tied leadership involved some measure of military might. But things are different now, I’m sure.
But the point remains, what is this diminished status in the world? Is it post-cold war? Post WWII?
By diminished status I mean that we are exiting a period when the US was an important actor across virtually every region of the world. We are entering a multi-polar world where regional powers are exerting greater influence into arenas where the US had previously had more sway.
Using China as an example, political conflicts are not only inevitable, but happening now. China owns a great deal of our debt and the absence of a Soviet counter weight gives China greater freedome to stretch its infuence at the expense of US power/prestige.
It is clear that the EU, India, China, blocs in South America are all working to fill political space previously held by the US. There have been a number of global initiatives on the environment, and proliferation at which the US was virtually non-participatory.
Culturally, the American brand is an all time low. While we suffered a similar diminished brand after Vietnam, this time I believe it is different. I believe this because we lost Vietnam in the context of the cold war. It was still a bi-polar world and Vietnam did not fundamentally change that.
The current period of realignment was inevitable with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. New blocs were bound to form, but the US has made a number of catasrophic choices in the post cold war era that have greatly weakened our positon: 1) rejection of climate change, has alienated even our closest allies, and cut us off from scientific dialogue and innovation; 2) the lack of universal health care has made our industries uncompetitive, we can no longer compete with foreign firms that do not have to pay employee health insurance; 3) refusal to pursue new energy sources and embrace lifestyle change that is not automotive relient; and 4) the invasion of Iraq, which has done great harm to the democratization of the world and as I said, diminished the US brand. I believe that this has done permanent harm, democracy in many corners of the world is seen as nothing but a tool of American imperialism, we have destroyed space in the Muslim world for pro-western and democratizing forces, who are now seen as nothing more than tools of America.
In my opinion, America’s soft power had always been more effective than it’s economic and military might and this resource was squandered. I do not believe we can regain it because in our new mulit-polar world, there are too many forces that will quickly move in to occupy the space we once inhabited.
Ah, but it’s not as settled as all that. China’s going in for a meltdown in the next several years. I say within the next 20, someone here who lives there… was it China Guy? said within 5-8 years after the Olympics, IIRC.
India is a bit harder to read, but I’m expecting interesting things to happen there within the next 30. Possibly leading to a breakup of the state.
All the next President has to do is to re-establish the more noble and proper side of America, the America that JFK spoke of.
I think even McCain can do that, if he wants. The decline is not inevitable, and the world is not multi-polar yet.
I disagree, it is not just an issue of China or India, or the EU taking our place, it is an issue of a radical re-alignment of the world order (the end of the cold war), coupled with a receding American empire. It doesn’t matter who takes up political space once occupied by America, what matters is our power is declining in a mulit-polar environment in which several actors will compete to occupy that space. The new multi-polar environment does not have the same kind of stability that the cold war did. The global political environment is now not as forgiving of mistakes as it was during the cold war.
There was a good article on this issue in the NY Times Magazine. From that article:
I’m not arguing that the US won’t remain an important global power, but the American empire, like all empires before it will recede (in my opinion, is receding). How we manage that realignment is the major issue confronting the next president.
I got an email from my congressman Levin. He said he was discussing the punishment of a girl who was raped in Saudi Arabia. They just responded Guantanamo, Abu Graib. We have lost all our moral ground.
My favorite story like this is from Cuba. While we don’t have an embassy there, we do have a diplomatic outpost. The Cuban government erected billboards across the street from it with giant abu Ghraib photos. We have lost the ability to exert any kind of moral authority in the world for at least a generation.
Iraq, global warming, universal health care, terrorism, crumbling infrastructure, peak oil, increasing disparities of income, wealth, and political power.
That’s not our decision to make, but the world’s. We’ve squandered the moral high ground, what we had left of it; we can’t simply declare a ‘do over’ and have people take it seriously.
No, we’re going to have to work at it. But, you know, the current occupant is so effing horrid that when he goes, the next guy may get a huge ‘I’m not him!’ bit of goodwill to grab and run with.
Read all seven pages of that link, by the way. It’s pretty good stuff.
So we can agree on: re-establishing America’s reputation in the world and adapting to a world which America may have the potential to lead but not to dictate to. Yes?
I think that much of the rest is subordinate to that. Global Climate Change will only be addressed meaningfully in multilateral contexts. The economies of the world are enmeshed. Combating Islamic extremism effectively is less a military fight than one won by integrating the Arab world sociopolitically into the community of world communities and thereby marginalizing extremists … minimally it is a global effort as well that needs to be fought at the level of hearts and minds.
E-Sabbath I started reading that link and was duly impressed with it, to point of muttering a “Wow, this nails it!” … and only then looked up to see who the author was!