EPTDear President-Elect Obama,
Congratulations on your election. You have recieved a political mandate from the American people to provide change.
Given the fact that most of the voting electorate has conflicting ideas, you've been cleverly circumspect and brief on your specifics. That is good. Now, more than ever, the American people need to not only be united with respect to their displays of patriotism, but be united with respect to their pocketbooks and 401ks. And you are the candidate of unity--and more importantly, hope.
Hope, as they say, is the last refuge of the damned. And damned we are--with sinking international power, rising debt, and a meandering political class which is incapable of providing leadership. Why do we need unity to deal with these problems? Because right now, we are in a national conundrum.
First, economics.
Simply put, in order to get our economic house in order, some segment of the population will have to bear sacrifice these next years--whether it be taxpayers (higher taxes) creditors (inflation) or future consumers and the elderly (cutbacks to present and future consumption from continued deleveraging). And not only will they have to bear it, they will have to bear it willingly--you will have to somehow convince them that they can and should sacrifice their material wealth.
Why willingly? Why can't you just force or slyly slip the solution through? Because in this case, each group has a way of neutralizing your solution no matter how hard you push it. Taxpayers can simply vote in a hostile Republican congress in 2010. Future consumers and the elderly, if you start cutting their present and future consumption, can likewise push members of your own party to increase spending, putting you in an undesirable position. Creditors should be separated into two camps--domestic and foreign. Foreigners will make your life unpleasant by dumping dollars--the Chinese economy has enough of a cash cushion to bear the costs, and I'm sure that the OPEC countries wouldn't mind another cheap-dollar-fuelled commodity boom. Domestically, you run the risk of a repeat of empty financial speculation and stagflation if you inflate--and you will simply be postponing an inevitable correction if you keep doing so.
Second, multilateralism.
America has been blessed with a discreet, realistic, and relatively benevolent internationalist establishment ever since the era of Elihu Root and the failure of Woodrow Wilson's hopelessly idealistic Fourteen Points. However, this intellectual tradition has been jeopardized by the rise of a virulent strain of neoconservative thinking which threatens to upset the carefully designed multilateral and international institutions which have guaranteed Western preeminency for the past half-century.
Now, more than ever, we need to strengthen and expand this establishment, because the current powers of the world have serious misunderstandings amongst their people. Hence, increasing soveriegnty amongst the great powers would likely lead to another round of autocannibalization amongst the powers (e.g. WWI). The current great powers in the world have no interest in such violence, however too much sovereignty awarded to any power might tempt them otherwise.
Hence, you must sell to the American public a system that constrains national soveriegnty for global order and peace. The system must allow for the jostling for minor scraps at times; it must let national leaders strut and posture in front of their respective domestic electorates to win votes. However, it must never tempt any one country to try a violent change in the international order.
It would be much better to reestablish and adjust the international financial, legal, and military institutions which have served the world so well, and establish a second New World Order built on America being the first amongst equals of a multipolar world.
This will undoubtedly be difficult to explain to the American people, who have long harbored a suspicion of foreign entanglements.
However, you, again, have hope and a credible proposition of unity at your back--not only in America, but around the world. So it is your task to sell this second world government to everyone.
President-Elect Obama, you are not the agent of change--rather, you are the rallying banner. You command hope, which means that people will trust the your spoken word. Find some people who will take your accumulated political capital and invest it well in a solution, and be the great communicator that keeps whatever suffering mass hopeful and content these next years. I see you've been studying how Reagan did it--that is good, just please find more intelligent people than he did.
May the people trust you and may they find solace in your word.
Best,
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