Within days, the 44th US President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn into office. Now, the daunting task for the 47-year old is a wide-ranging agenda for change.

From “sick” to “dire”, the President has been escalating his wording when describing the country’s ailing economy. He has been lobbying the congress to pass his 8 billion dollar stimulus package including tax cuts and an investment in infrastructure. This comes as US job losses for 2008 hit 2.6 million, the highest in 16 years. Meanwhile, America’s budget deficit is likely to reach nearly $1,200 billion this year even without Obama’s fiscal stimulus.

Ironically, the current economic catastrophe has also given Obama opportunity to implement many of the pledges on which he campaigned. Funding long-overdue healthcare reforms will be much easier if he can show that they will also be good for the economy. The same goes for American energy policies.

With all these possibilities, what should Barack Obama's priority be once he takes office？Will his presidency live up to the pre-election hype?

To discuss these issues, we caught up with Mr. Bill Ritter, Colordao Gonernor of the United States. Ritter is a registered Democrat.

Bill Ritter was raised on a small farm in Arapahoe County. He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from Colorado State University in 1978. Three years later, he got his law degree from the University of Colorado. Ritter was elected as Colorado's 41st governor in 2006 and the first Colorado-born governor in more than 35 years.

Obama's Challenges

Q: How long do you think this honeymoon with President Obama that American people and media have will last?

B: As a person who is elected official, I never make predictions about honeymoon. Mine lasted four days.

Q: Was it better than you are predicted?

B: American media scrutinizes very closely, all of the actions of an elected official. They all watch very closely. There will be people out there because we have an opposition party, the Republicans, who now do not control either the house or the Congress. They lost the presidency, they lost the majority in the senate, they lost the majority in the house. So they will be out there as a voice in the opposition. The American people really believe that we are at a time where we need a gifted leader who has a vision. And I think that’s the important thing about Barack Obama and his presidency. He has a vision for how to move the country forward. It involves economic stimulus, but economic stimulus around ideas that are helping promote the right ideas for the 21st century. We can’t do economic stimulus around the 20th century ideas. It has to be like renewable energy or biosciences or outer space. Things are high-tech but also important to the future of the country.

A new study by the Paris-based business school INSEAD shows the US as the world’s most innovative economy. Despite its current economic woes, America remains unrivalled in terms of business sophistication and competitiveness.

Q: You have to have the vision first.

B: You have to have the vision, and the vision has to be a product of thinking about what we need to do, as the country what our role should be. Doing that is a leading country, economic leader in the world. How we can make a significant meaning for difference in the world.

Q: I see you are very confident of him. We all know his priority is really to use this stimulus package to help America out of economic downturn. But how will this affect his previous promises during the campaign.

B: If he uses that money, the stimulus money in the right way, you actually create jobs. That jumps-start the economy and the revenue that flows in helps the economy grow. So it is making an investment. You can do it part by borrowing. It is important for him to find a way to jump-start the economy. I really understand what you were saying. He has made a lot of significant promises during the campaign.

Q: Let’s look at the reality. You have to use the money to help these companies. We are talking about auto giants these days and other companies as well. At the meantime, you promise to cut tax for these people. But you just can’t do that. You only have a limited amount of money in your budget.

B: He also said he was going to roll back tax cuts that George Bush had given for the very wealthy. So that actually increases revenue. He also said he was going to end War of Iraq in a very thoughtful way. In America, we are spending two to three billion dollars a month. And if in fact he is successful and ending the war in a thoughtful way, that is overtime, not the next day. Overtime, whether it’s a year and half, two years or three years, and then we will certainly help the economy as well if you spend the less of our defense dollars.

Q: Do you think your fellow American people will buy this? A lot of people voted for him because they thought he’s going to cut tax for everyone, because they thought he’s going to give universal health care to everyone, but obviously he can’t at this point of time. So obviously he has to sacrifice the interest of these people.

B: Nothing is as obvious as you would say. I just disagree that it’s obvious that he cannot accomplish the great deal.

Q: You think it's possible?

B: I really believe that overtime if you return to a place of the healthier economy.

Q: Overtime, of course, if you give him five or ten years. What about in the short-term?

B: I think even in the short term, with the economic stimulus package, it gets the economy going again. You can do a significant thing to create jobs and to provide far greater deal of economic activity. How long it takes to implement the health care plan. I think that’s a difficult question, but I don’t think it’s ten years. I think you can put in place a health care plan. American people care about that they have something to hope for.

Q:  What others care about most today? Is it jobs?

B: Well, today they care about the economy. They care about the fact that the unemployment rate is very high and the credit market is shut down. So they care about stimulating the economy. That’s the thing they care about most. But overall I say what they care about is that they have a reason to hope for a better day. And he talked about hope in a campaign. I think that it is important for Americans today here.

Q: People turn to compare Obama with other presidents like Jimmy Carter and Franklin Roosevelt who took offices at a time of financial difficulty. What do you think?

B: I think that the comparison with the 1930s is apt. It is that kind of difficult economic time. The way Franklin Roosevelt actually built back the American economy is that he did so boldly. He went out with a put-in-place program that were probably impossible to solve the American people five or ten years earlier, but he solved them on a basis of needing to build the infrastructure of the country and put people to work. I think we find ourselves in a very similar time. There is a real reason to think about massive infrastructure. Massive infrastructure and they build it to put people to work, those two things, those two ideas, when they are married together really makes sense to the American people and I think that’s why there is this comparison to Franklin Roosevelt.

Q: A vision is important. You have to have a vision. You said Obama has that vision. Ok, he has the vision, but does he have experience? There is still concern about his lack of economic experiences or experiences still with handling economic issues. So do you think the newly elected or appointed cabinet members will help him?

B: I compare our president John Kennedy. John Kennedy was elected 1960. He had also served United States Senate for 4 years. So he had very similar experience. And he said we were going to to put a man on the moon. America would put a man on the moon by 1969. John Kennedy wasn’t an astronaut and he wasn’t an astrophysicist. He wasn’t the person who has been a scientist doing that. He said that ‘he was sure leadership that he gave the scientific community are reason to really work at this goal, putting the man on the moon’.

Q: But he wasn’t in such a difficult situation as we have today. When people are in hard time, things seem to fall.

B: I think that was a very bold thing in 1961, to say that you are going to put a man on the moon. I think John Kennedy did not live to see that, but his leadership mattered. Barack Obama has surrounded himself with a very capable group of people and these are difficult times. I won’t underestimate how difficult the time will be and the need for us to take bold measures in order for us to come through this and reemerge this strong economy. But I do think that we have the capability. American people have the capability of doing that. And I also think he is surrounded himself with people who have the wisdom to see how this is done. I don’t want to be naive about this. I don’t think it’s going to be easy in 2009. I don’t think we reemerge from the downturn the day after. We will begin to reemerge hopefully in the second half of 2009, but there may be some painful time. We just believe the American people are already to follow Barack Obama and he has a leadership quality that can help us in a very significant way.

Page 1  2  3

Home > Hot Topic> The Main Talk