An Anonymous Candidate Named Barack Obama

It's time to get ready.

2008 is full upon us - surveillance, campaigns, mudslinging, recession, war, global warming, terror in Gaza, Euros, and the Death Gasp of the Terror Presidency.

Framework: Election

Record crowds are turning out to vote in Democratic primaries for a white woman and a black man, the Republicans have chosen a candidate who doesn't strike morbid fear into the hearts of moderates. We might, it seems, have the makings of a legitimate election on our hands, might just maybe end up with a functioning government that represents the populace from whom its power is derived.Amazing.

But before jumping to such a rosy depiction of 2008, let's remember that George Bush is still in office, and who knows what kind of new policy loopholes he'll enact as a lame duck. One would hardly be surprised if the traditional role of peacemaker is replaced by 9 months of continuous dismantling of the executive branch's accountability. We've already seen the bullying of Congress, the gutting of federal agencies like FEMA and the EPA, a mockery made of the Budget process, and the partisan siege of the Department of Justice. Before the year is over, we could see liberal internment camps, drilling in Yellowstone, and tax credits for personal 18-wheelers. At this point, anything's possible.

November does promise a change in management, however, and if it isn't the political equivalent of Mother Teresa replacing Adolf Hitler, (even Obama isn't a saint...yet), the result will be something like jumping from boiling water to warm bathtub. We will not be able to avoid the impending doom of an economy that is in desperate need of a major attitude adjustment. Markets are going to wither and close to American dollars, the China juggernaut will continue to churn, and the Euro is beginning to look like the best vehicle for international investment. Make no doubt about it, however idealistic the next president may be, there are serious problems that will require techniques as serious and sophisticated as they are idealistic and visionary. There are giants about us in the political world, and we have skeletons in the closet that go back nearly a century. The American Empire is face to face with its day of reckoning, and will fall on the shoulders of the next president to codify the legacy of this country's one great century.

A war rages on that is transparent and seems juvenile in 2008, a small bandaid pasted on a hotspot of widespread insurrection. There is an awakening of global realities and a burgeoning consensus that 20th century means of domination and subjugation must become obsolete if we are to avoid collective collapse, socially and environmentally as well as economically and politically. The next president will be unable to prevent this collapse alone, but he or she must at least begin to address these challenges in ways that are constructive, inclusive, and reflective of global realities.

There are a few concrete "must-do" items waiting on the desk in the Oval Office for whoever the duty falls upon:

- Sign a multi-national agreement on GHG emissions that includes a provisional goal of 50% reduction by 2050 by the United States. And mean it.

- Cut the D.O.D. budget by 20% across the board. Start at the top.

- Create an effective, efficient, and enforceable immigration policy that allows foreign workers to arrive with dignity and remembers that the United States evicted millions of indigenous peoples in its quest for North American dominance.

- Fix health care, at least for children, the elderly, and our veterans. Believe it or not, these groups are the cream of the crop; it's time we remembered to treat them as such. And ban television advertisements for prescription drugs; they serve only to artificially inflate prices.

- Make gay marriage, marijuana possession under 1oz., and jaywalking legal. Raise the driving age to 17 nationwide.

- Make college education tax deductable and set a federal limit on student loan interest rates at 6%.

- Begin the process of drafting a comprehensive debt-reduction strategy that addresses the rampant abuse of consumer credit as well as our national financial quagmire.


This is, obviously, a beginning. Many of these reforms and policy guidelines are, at best, piecemeal. But in order to do positive work in his or her term(s), the next president must understand that the American political machine is a slow-moving behemoth in a lighting quick world. He or she must constantly approach the process with the realization that radical suggestions become moderate policies. So let's pick someone with the experience that counts: the experience to know that hopeful rhetoric and audacious tactics may run the risk of being called naive, but they are often the necessary to effect even slight changes in course. A degree or two to the left in 2008 may eventually result in twenty or thirty degrees in as may years, just as the Reagan administration plotted the neo-con course that's lasted since the mid-1980s. This is a turning point; a vertex of political balance that has consequences for the entire world. Choose accordingly. Choose Obama.