congratulations world! :)

[Peter Korsten]

Andy Tarpinian schreef:

> I just hope he can live up to it.

He just might.In my view, he's going to have three main challenges:
* The budget deficit and national debt
* The economy
* Foreign relations

There would be more, of course, like making healthcare more accessible 
for all Americans, but those are issues that do not directly affect the 
outside world.

In the case of the budget deficit and the national debt, that will be a 
tough nut to crack, and quite frankly I have no idea how he will handle 
that. We'll have to wait and see.

Concerning the economy, in Europe we already have experience with the 
consequences of deregulation, albeit not with such disastrous effects as 
the US. An aspect of the European Union that gets little attention is 
that it's all about privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation, 
following in the footsteps of the United Kingdom that spearheaded this a 
decade earlier. So a plumber from Poland may work in France. (Hmm, 
plumbers seem a regularly recurring item in elections.) But it quickly 
turned out that you need an independent regulator as well; having the 
market regulate itself simply doesn't work. In this regard, Obama would 
probably be in favour of tighter government control.

Lastly, foreign relations. There is little to go by, but one incident 
gives me good hope: the Russo-Georgian war of August. Whilst Bush, 
McCain, Palin and Miliband (British foreign secretary) were all climbing 
on their soapboxes and demanding this and that, Obama, whilst condemning 
both the Georgian recklessness and the Russian disproportionateness, 
called for talks with the Russians. Which is exactly what the French 
president did, and which at least had some success. (And guess what I 
heard Miliband say the other day on the BBC.) The same thing goes about 
the stand-off about Iran's nuclear programme.

He'll have more on his plate, and trying to unite a politically 
polarised nation is perhaps even more challenging, but as Andy said, 
let's hope he can live up to the expectations.

- Peter