The Challenges to President Barack Obama- a Historic Perspective
by Marc Schulman

President Obama's election was a groundbreaking moment in American history. The election of an African American to the presidency, just 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have Dream" speech is breathtaking in its historic symbolism. The day after the election, Thomas Friedman wrote that the Civil War that began at the Manassas battlefield ended when Virginia voted to elect Barack Obama president. There is no question that his election closed a chapter in American history that began in Jamestown, Virginia when the first slaves were brought to our shores.

Beyond the groundbreaking nature of election, which also included that largest democratic majority in since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the first time Virginia voted for a democrat since then, and the first time since John F. Kennedy that a candidate did not try to hide his intellectual abilities and strengths.

The presidency of Barack Obama which begins with so much symbolism, is unlikely to be defined by that symbolism, rather it will be defined by how the President confronts the challenges that he faces as he takes office.

Much has been written about how the challenges that Obama faces are the greatest since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933. In some ways, however, his challenges may indeed be even greater. While the state of the US economy in 1933 was much worse than it is today, it had already hit rock bottom by the time President Roosevelt took over. Today our economy seems to be in a free fall, with no one knowing where the bottom is located. When FDR took over he had many new tools to use to try to improve the economy. Obama will be more limited. The many Keynesian tools that Roosevelt instituted have already been used at least to some degree, and yet all it has seemed to do is to slow the fall. When FDR came to power he was not faced with a gargantuan federal deficit, Obama will inherit the largest one in US history, and that will hobble his actions. When FDR came to power the United States was at peace. Today the US is at war in two countries. When FDR came to power the US was a net creditor country, today it owes the world trillions of dollars.

On the bright side, the year that FDR came to power, a small man with a mustache also came to power. His name was Adolph Hitler. Whatever evils the Bin Laden's of the world hold, lets just pray they do not have powers to bring them about in the same way that Hitler brought about destruction to the whole world.

The Chinese have a curse- You should live in interesting times- Whatever else the Obama presidency will be, it certainly will be interesting.