“Change. Change. Change. Change… Change. Change. Chaaange. When you say words a lot they don’t mean anything. Or maybe they don’t mean anything anyway, and we just think they do.” –Delirium, The Sandman #41, Neil Gaiman
Change. That was all we heard about on the campaign trail. As soon as Barack Obama had some success with the word, everyone from Hillary Clinton to John McCain jumped to use the word for themselves. And the more we heard it, the less it meant.
Yet with the election of Barack Obama on Tuesday, November 4, the country experienced a couple of huge changes right away. It has been discussed plenty elsewhere, and will continue to be discussed no doubt for many years to come, that Obama is the first African-American president-elect.
This also marks the end of Republican domination of government, which aside from a brief period when Democrats under Clinton controlled Congress as well, started in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.
Clinton did little to change the larger narrative of government in those eight years in power, but Barack Obama will become president at a different time in history. He campaigned explicitly against Clinton-era policies in the primaries, and he has been swept into power with a larger number of votes than any president before, along with gains for his party in both houses of Congress.
Obama, in other words, has a mandate for change. He also has, in the wake of a frightening economic crisis and two failing wars, an opportunity to enact that change swiftly:
And it appears that his transition team is already at work figuring out the fastest way to do it.
According to the Washington Post, Obama’s team has already identified about 200 Bush administration actions that can be overturned without going to Congress for approval. Regulations and executive orders that Bush enacted can quickly be reversed by an Obama executive order, and several of these policies will have immediate impact on not just the United States, but the world.
Closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay would send an immediate signal abroad of a break with the Bush years, and would allow for trials of some detainees and the release of others. While the Post notes that no official decisions have been made and it will require months, the fact that leaks have hit the media from the disciplined Obama camp on this subject means that closing Gitmo is a top priority.
The detention camp has been a point of contention for Obama’s activist base as well as internationally, and closing it would be expected to improve the U.S.’s image abroad tremendously. It would not be the only step needed to restore the “moral leadership” that Obama spoke of so often, but it would certainly be a good start.
Other priorities mentioned, that would be far easier to change, include the global gag rule, which bars international aid groups that receive U.S. funding from counseling women about the availability of abortion. Like many other “pro-life” policies, the global gag rule actually ends up cutting support for the very policies that work to reduce the number of abortions and HIV/AIDS cases. Lifting the rule, as President Clinton did, will improve the lives of millions of women worldwide.
Obama may also swiftly overturn Bush’s ban on federal funding for stem cell research, which also pleased “pro-life” conservatives at the expense of scientific research. Prominent conservatives such as Nancy Reagan have argued for increased stem cell research, and again, since no legislation was passed, Obama can allow the funding with a simple executive order.
Climate change is yet another global problem on which President-elect Obama seems to be prepared to move quickly. From overturning Bush’s decision to let California raise environmental restrictions on cars past the national average to the creation of a National Energy Council that would take into account greenhouse gases when making decisions, there are many things the Obama administration can quickly do to have an immediate impact not just on the United States, but on the world.
He’s not even President yet, and there’ll be plenty of time for him to make mistakes and for the ten million or so people who donated or volunteered for his campaign to complain that he’s sold us out. But for now, it seems that Barack Obama is aware of his position in the world and the unique opportunity that he has now, at the beginning of his tenure, to actually live up to some of his promises of change.
Nothing would make me happier than to see him close down GITMO. It would restore the faith that many people globally have lost in the US. It would even better if he would go one step further and return that prime real estate to its true owner CUBA. The Cuban government does not have the means to eject the US but they have not been silent about being upset about the crimes committed on their soil. The idea that the US can and should have bases all over the globe against the wishes of the local citizenry is problematic to say the least.