In anticipation of President Obama’s final State of the Union address tomorrow, AEI scholars from across the Institute offer their thoughts on what the President should say, will say, and will not say.
…What he should take on are the challenges no longer on the horizon, but at our doorstep: the flourishing of Islamist extremism; the collapse of the modern Middle East; the new era of dictators from Moscow to Istanbul to Caracas to Tehran to Cairo and beyond; the simultaneous rise of bad China and the diminishing PRC of growth and opportunity; the slow motion collapse of the European Union and the rise of fringe leaders on the left and right across Europe; the challenge of millions of refugees; the loss of our military readiness and modernization; the needed leadership of the United States. Will he? We’ll be watching, sadly without the president’s apparently undiminished pollyannaish demeanor.
China’s large credit bubble is bursting, the all-important emerging market economies are being hit hard by low international commodity prices and a reversal of capital flows, and the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are taking deliberate action to weaken the Japanese yen and the Euro.
In these challenging international economic circumstances, one would hope that the President will reassert US leadership of the global economic and financial system. In particular, one would hope that he will offer fresh ideas about how to promote global macroeconomic policy coordination, with a view to keeping international markets open and to preventing a further slide to beggar-my-neighbor currency adjustments that would be destructive to US and global economic prosperity.
I would like to see President Obama do in his last State of the Union speech what Bill Clinton did in the months following the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994: acknowledge that his views have been at least partially rejected by the voters; signal a willingness to engage seriously; and if possible compromise with the congressional majority and to respect the constitutional limits on his own power.
I do not expect him to take such an approach.
For more pre-SOTU analysis from AEI scholars, read the full symposium: ‘Hope and change’ eight years on: Time for Obama’s final State of the Union.
To arrange an interview with an AEI scholar, please contact AEI media services at mediaservices@aei.org or 202-862-5829.
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1Zn9y9B
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment