Charles Krauthammer lays out Obama's vision with crystal clarity:
His three goals: universal health care, universal education, and a new
green energy economy highly funded and regulated by government.
. . . These revolutions in health care, education and energy are not just abstract hopes. They have already taken life in Obama's $787 billion stimulus package, a huge expansion of social spending constituting a down payment on Obama's plan for remaking the American social contract.
. . . These revolutions in health care, education and energy are not just abstract hopes. They have already taken life in Obama's $787 billion stimulus package, a huge expansion of social spending constituting a down payment on Obama's plan for remaking the American social contract.
Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize. Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt's transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy. . . (more . . .)
As Krauthammer says, "Let the debate begin." (Note that Krauthammer does not comment on Obama's foreign policy. He analyzes here only his domestic goals)