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Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, observed that "the Presidency of the United States is the most extraordinary job ever devised"—with the one assuming this position "tested by pressures unimaginable to anyone who has not held the job" ("The Next President," Foreign Affairs, Sept.-Oct. 2008).
Although the new president will lead the world's most powerful single country, without question a superpower, he "will inherit a more difficult set of international problems than any of his predecessors have since at least the end of World War II . . . He will have to reshape policies on the widest imaginable range of challenges, domestic and international . . .
"He must revitalize a flagging economy; tame a budget awash in red ink; reduce energy dependence . . . tackle the growing problem of nuclear proliferation; improve the defenses of the homeland against global terrorists while putting more pressure on al Qaeda, especially in Pakistan; and, of course, manage two wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] simultaneously" (ibid., emphasis added throughout).
That's a tall order! Insightful observers now discuss "the real new world order" ushered in by recent events in the country of Georgia and by madness in the financial markets on Wall Street and elsewhere. The state of the economy is probably the main challenge the next occupant of the Oval Office will face.
Veteran British journalist Simon Jenkins asked these penetrating questions in The Sunday Times: "You don't understand it either, do you? How could a clutch of dud mortgages somewhere in the American Midwest bring the mightiest financial centres on earth close to collapse? How could the esoteric practices of risk exchange [e.g., packaging, selling and reselling questionable mortgages] sabotage what was just six months ago, two smoothly performing capitalist economies? . . . Economics is still a mystery wrapped in an enigma" (Sept. 21, 2008).
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