It's about to get nasty: time for Obama's movement to get moving (Gary Younge, The Guardian)

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It's about to get nasty: time for Obama's movement to get moving

He has plans to stop the war, save the planet and redistribute wealth. If he's to overcome the lobbyists he'll need a new coalition

Gary Younge in New York
The Guardian, Monday 2 March 2009

Last week was a busy one for Barack Obama. On Monday he held a bipartisan fiscal summit where he pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. On Tuesday he addressed both houses of Congress for the first time, promising the nation: "We will recover, we will rebuild." On Thursday he produced a budget that set out to redistribute wealth, heal the sick and save the planet. On Friday he stopped the war. On Saturday he threw down the gauntlet to special interests and lobbyists. And on the seventh day he rested.

In the course of a regular presidency, any one of these might be seen as a bold project. To tackle them all in one term seems ambitious to the point of foolhardiness. To announce them all in one week lies somewhere between the audacity of hope and the pugnacity of hubris.

But then this is no regular presidency - a function not just of the man but the times. "You never let a serious crisis go to waste," his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, told reporters after the election. And this crisis is serious. Comparisons with the 1930s are premature, but each release of data has the economy straining for historical comparison.

(...)

Read the full column here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/obama-administration-ambitions

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