Excerpts from an editorial in The Times yesterday:
The question is which will come the sooner: Inauguration or the first claims of betrayal? Barack Obama took wing on the back of imprecise hopes beautifully expressed. But an asset in a campaign can be a liability in office.
The problem is that the Obama campaign worked on the basis that people projected on to the candidate their own definition of change. The great disillusionment generated by his predecessor melted into a pleasing account of the dawn to come. Meanwhile, every vocal supporter has a private definition of success, which will now begin to infiltrate the public debate. As Yogi Berra once said: “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” The chorus of disapproval is tuning up, off stage left.
The appointment of Arne Duncan, the reforming chief of the Chicago schools system, shows that Obama’s anti-reform campaign stance was a pose to win over the teaching unions, which will now be quick to cry foul. The Democratic primary campaign was also thick with detailed health plans. Every Democrat worth the party card imagines the day when the United States ceases to be the only wealthy industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system.
The international joy at Sen. Obama’s victory has already brought the world closer together. But, once again, this optimism trails a series of irreconcilable hopes. The real issues of the hour — talking to terrorists, the precarious Middle East, the ambitions of Russia, a strategy for dealing with Iran, a surge in Afghanistan — will require compromise, diplomatic chicanery and, sometimes, at least the threat of belligerence. Not much of the dirty business of politics was priced into the hope that greeted the election of the president who inherits these problems. Let us hope that judgment does not set in too soon. President Obama may disappoint us, but not yet.
