The Vantage Point

It may not seem like it at times, but America and the world traveled a long way in 2008. And — even with the economic meltdown and the terrorist attacks in India — some progress was made.

I've been doing some reflecting.

As the world was about to ring in 2008, Andrew Sullivan of The Times of London may have shown the most political prescience of any observer, foreign or domestic, when he suggested — less than a week before the Iowa caucuses — that "After following this race for an almost interminable preamble, all I can say is that I can't imagine a more constructive race than one between Obama and McCain. The odds are still against it. But it is more imaginable now than at any time in the past year."

Keep that word "imaginable" in mind because the new administration's success or failure will depend, to a great extent, upon how reality matches up against how voters imagine things should be.

Sullivan gets points, though, for suggesting, in December 2007, when Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were the smart-money favorites to win their parties' nominations, that Obama and McCain would be the best nominees.

And he probably deserves additional credit for making this observation not from the heart of America, where the Iowa caucuses were held, but from across the Atlantic Ocean.

Obama's race for the nomination went on for six more months, but he became a serious contender for it in Iowa a year ago today.

And the candidate Obama battled for the nomination until June (now his secretary of state-designate), Clinton, finished third in Iowa that night, slightly behind former vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

McCain trailed most of the Republicans in the field in Iowa, finishing fourth, and his eventually successful race for the nomination actually got going the next week, when he won the New Hampshire primary. But he wrapped up his nomination a few months before Obama did.

I mentioned Sullivan's article in my blog about four days before the Iowa caucuses.

In the same blog post, I mentioned that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had misgivings about all the candidates on both sides and complained that "[t]he trouble is that ... neither the Democratic nor the Republican slate of candidates seems, at this point, to contain an excellent future president."

I wrote that future presidents are usually considered inadequate until they get the opportunity to prove themselves on the job.

"After becoming president, some never exceed the expectations of mediocrity that were established by the media and their fellow citizens," I wrote, "but truly great presidents prove themselves on the job, not on the campaign trail."

The issues confronting Obama are different than the ones America expressed concern about in January 2008, but he will have no shortage of opportunities to prove whether he is one of those "truly great presidents."

And great presidents often have to prove themselves while dealing with problems they couldn't anticipate during the campaign.

• Gas prices are no longer hovering around $3.00/gallon — which is where they were in most places when 2008 began. They're about half that, currently, but they're bound to go up again, and America has made no progress in developing alternate energy sources in the last 12 months.
  
  But we have — at long last — begun a dialogue on that issue. And that's progress, such as it is. The next step will be to actually do something. Preferably, we'll get started on that right away, instead of waiting until the annual price spike around Memorial Day, when such efforts will be seen as politically motivated.
• In 2007, the annual unemployment rate was less than 5%. In the last 12 months, the economy lost 2 million jobs, and now unemployment is more than 6%, with many economists predicting it will go even higher in the next year. There is a lot of pressure on Obama and the Democrats who control the House and Senate to do something about joblessness now.
• Likewise, there is a lot of pressure to do something about the housing crisis. Millions of Americans have lost their homes and the money they've invested in them.
  
  The challenge is to make Americans feel more secure about the roofs over their heads and the jobs they hold (or the new jobs they hope to get). If the Democrats can accomplish that, they will win the allegiance of voters across the American spectrum for a generation or more.
• The implosion of the American economy wasn't exactly a surprise to many economists, many of whom have been anticipating something like it for years.
  
  It probably surprised Obama, who (I'm sure) entered the campaign expecting the Iraq War to be the dominant issue, an issue which he undoubtedly believed could differentiate him from his opponents, most of whom spoke against the war but had been complicit in giving George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq in 2003.
  
  But Obama discovered quickly that — unless an unpopular war is being fought by troops who have been drafted into service — pocketbook issues still trump everything else.
  
  It was unfortunate that neither major party nominee brought much economic expertise into the general campaign.
  
  But, by November, it was understood by the voters that the winner would have no choice but to confront these domestic issues first. America's involvement in a two-front war and the need to improve national security remain high on the agenda, but they must take a backseat to the economic issues that affect us all.

The presidency almost always seems like an impossible job for anyone to take on.

But I guess it takes a special kind of confidence for someone to seek it in the first place.

In a couple of weeks, the new administration will begin. Let's hope the new president can continue to inspire confidence in the people, regardless of the challenges the future brings.