Obamawatch

The presidency is usually the favoured topic for students of American Politics on the government of the USA module, so they would be well advised to follow in detail the path taken by Obama. Many have questioned when Obama the prophet, the campaigner who has talked in grand themes, who would become Obama the president, bogged down in the dim realities of everyday politics. An American politician once said that campigns are in poetry, government is in prose. Never was this more true than in Obama’s case.

To keep up to date on a regular basis, students need to look no further than the Economist’s US section.

Key to Obama’s success as president will be his ability to steer the nation out of the economic mess they are in. Obama himself is no economist, therefore a key task will be to assemble the right men around him. Obama is undoubtedly an intelligent man, probably the most intelligent holder of the office since Richard Nixon. But one man cannot be clever enough to know everything and sometimes intelligence is about recognising your limitations. This was key to the Reagan presidency. Ronald Reagan, is widely regarded as one of the least cerebral Oval Office occupants. But he was certainly clever enough to assemble a top team.

The Economist notes this week that Obama has moved the Council of Economic Advisers back into the White House, after Bush had dispensed it to an office a block away in 2003. Christina Romer, who chairs the CEA, has daily briefiings with her, Larry Summers (chief economic adviser), Tim Geithner (Treasury Secretary), and Peter Orzag (budget director). Further strengthening is evident:

‘Mr Obama also continues to fill his administration with highly-regarded technocrats. They are said to include Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to Bill Clinton; David Cutler, a Harvard health-care economist; Peter Henry, a Stanford University economist and advocate of free international capital movements; Jeremy Stein, a Harvard economist specialising in corporate finance; and Diana Farrell, who headed the think-tank affiliate of McKinsey. Joining Ms Romer on the council are Cecilia Rouse, a labour expert from Princeton, and Austan Goolsbee, a long-serving Obama adviser now grappling with the foreclosure crisis.

Mr Obama once called himself a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” In the coming months, the world will have a chance to decide which image of Mr Obama is the right one.’