Barack Obama: The Unenviable Task of Prioritizing

Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, the economy, immigration, healthcare...what should be the main focus of the administration? This week the President faces a defiant North Korea threatening nuclear war, Congress debating wildly different healthcare plans and of course there is the questionable election results coming out of Iran. While all of this is going on the nation is involved in one of the deepest recessions in modern history and two ongoing wars. Anyone who wishes they were Barack Obama right now might want to have their head examined.

So how does the White House prioritize the crises and determine which issues should come first on the daily calendar? It seems like none of them is getting anyone’s full attention. Which crisis gets top billing?

North Korea is thumbing their nose at both the U.S. and the U.N. stating that they are going to move forward with making nuclear weapons and have basically dared the world to try to stop them. The U.S. has said and done very little in response. Obama at least has taken the stance that there will be no more carrot in the old carrot and stick equation with North Korea moving forward. Hope the tough talk works out better than it did for the last few guys that had his job.

Iran held elections last week. The results as presented by the Ahmadinejad government have met with a bit of opposition from the actual voters. Apparently the tens of thousands of people rioting in the streets did not in fact vote to re-elect Ahmadinejad and are a little upset about the announcement that they did. So far the Obama administration has taken a wait-and-see attitude on the issue. President Obama has said that he did not want to have it appear that he was meddling in Iranian affairs so not a lot being done on that front.

Congress is now in a pitched battle over healthcare. Both Democrats and Republicans are floating healthcare plans for consideration. While the White House is backing the Democratic plan in general, the President was criticized for recently praising doctors for their commitment to lowering health care costs despite the fact that they strongly opposed the Democratic healthcare reform bill. Much like the Clinton healthcare reform plan this debate is likely to drag on for months without a tangible result.

While all of this is going on the President is getting ready to propose regulations that will create a consumer financial protection department within the government and clamp down on poor financial decision making. Needless to say there will be strong opposition to the plan which will likely lead to a long drawn out battle over financial reform in addition to the battles over healthcare and immigration reform heating up the halls of Congress now.

A positive note the White House can appreciate for the moment is that the House passed the war funding bill so the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be paid for a while longer. Republicans fought it because of a provision to give money to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but in the end it narrowly passed. It would seem that nothing will come easy for this administration.

It would seem that the President’s plate is rather full and that nothing will be getting his undivided attention for some time to come but you have to admire the fact that he is taking it all on. Things are moving slowly and nothing is really getting ticked off the to-do list completely but things are moving on some fronts. We may be facing yet another war in Korea and our economy is still in the toilet but if the job was easy, anyone could do it.

We will all have to wait and see what happens with North Korea and Iran and things at home and on the battlefront are going to be dicey for awhile. One good thing is that while none of the issues are being resolved quickly, the President is working on all of them. In times of crisis sometimes you have to do a little of everything to do the best job possible.

Troy Wilson-Ripsom - Staff Writer | Give your feedback on this article. | Click icon to Digg this article

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