Obama´s presidency to start amid expectations, hopes, challenges

FROM ECONOMY TO WARS

Despite the whole nation's blessings and all of his living predecessors, Obama will inherit a nation in deep economic woes with record-high unemployment, struggling key industries like finance and auto, an alarming housing crisis, among others, dragged by rocketing war spending and a collapsed financial system.

"The most significant change will be for the passage of the major economic stimulus package bill that the president-elect has put forward. It is most important thing in the first year of his presidency," said Mark Rozell, a professor on public policy at George Mason University.

Obama has urged lawmakers in Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, to act immediately in a bipartisan way on the economic stimulus package and has put forward some details, such as investing in infrastructure and clean energy.

"I think the success in the first year of his presidency is going to be judged on whether he is able to get the economic program enacted that will create some confidence in the markets in the United States and settles the financial situation somewhat," Rozell said.

"If he is not able to do that, it is going to be a very difficult road for him as president because that is what more than anything else the country is looking forward for him to do."

On health care, an issue that has haunted Americans for decades, Obama is also committed to keeping his campaign promise to extend its coverage and improve its efficiency.

"During his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama proposed major changes to the U.S. healthcare system," Henry Aaron, a senior fellow on health care policy at the Washington-based Brookings, said.

"Given the enormous political difficulties associated with the will of approving those changes, it is quite likely that they (Obama's government) will spend much of the calendar year trying to design a reform plan, negotiating with key members of Congress, trying to determine what will be mutually agreeable to members of Congress and to the administration," he said.

Aaron also said that it was tricky to strike a balance between improving health care and reducing the budget deficit that was mainly attributed to health care expenses.

"There will be a merger between social policy concern and reforming the health care system, and the longer term worry about the danger from continuing a large deficit after the economy has recovered," he said.

On foreign policy, the most important move Obama is expected to make is to shift resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, making it the focus of the U.S. anti-terror war.

"That is of course will be the most important shift in polices in the Middle East that will take place in the early part of Obama's administration if he is to follow through with that policy as mentioned during his presidential campaign," Rozell said.

The Defense Department has said that Obama can expect in the first days of his presidency several programs on how to start to end the Iraq war and shift the focus to Afghanistan, including his plan to withdraw troops from Iraq in the first 16 months after inauguration.

According to reports in several major newspapers, Obama's team has already disclosed his intention to start the process of closing the Guantanamo prison where many scandals and criticism of the Bush administration in interrogating and prosecuting terrorist suspects have brewed.