Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

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94 politics and governance
politics were pragmatic, not ideological. Yet the measures taken
in those fi rst hundred days, however energetic, were not particularly
successful. Nor did Roosevelt’s New Deal, for all that
it accomplished, end the Depression. The Second World War did
that. What Roosevelt did do, however, was to restore confi dence
in the presidency, the government, and particularly the capacity of
democracy to confront serious problems.
Barack Obama, the 44th U.S. president, faces challenges that
dwarf even those that confronted Lincoln and Roosevelt. At this
writing (December 2008) the economy is in free fall, major corporate
pillars of the economy are toppling, fi nancial markets have
imploded, we are losing two wars, U.S. infrastructure is decrepit, our
politics are still bitterly divided, and looming ahead are the multiple
challenges of the long emergency. Beyond restoring a semblance of
fi nancial order, President Obama must confront for some time to
come what Robert Kuttner call “the habits of mind that produced
the crisis” (2008, p. 74). He faces as well the large task of recalibrating
the offi ce of the presidency to the limits of the Constitution
and restoring what political scientist Richard Neustadt once
defi ned as the only real power the president has—the power to
persuade. The coercive and manipulative powers of the presidency
were enlarged by George W. Bush and Richard Cheney in ways
that diminished respect, trust, and effectiveness here and abroad. But
unless those enlargements are repudiated by law, all future presidents
can—if they choose—wage war preemptively without much
interference from Congress, seize and hold American citizens, spy
on the citizenry without much if any legal restraint, use practically
any federal agency for political purposes, manipulate the press in
ways inconceivable prior to 2000, fi re federal attorneys for political
gain, destroy evidence in criminal cases, use the Justice Department
to prosecute members of the opposing party, offer lucrative no-bid
government contracts to friends, abet the creation of private security
armies, torture, create secret prisons, assassinate inconvenient
foreign leaders, circumvent laws by the use of signing statements,