Washington Post asks various eminences to offer some thoughts about what Barack Obama’s top priorities ought to be. I think it’s disappointing that the answers tend to be so unresponsive to actual events in the world. My personal interests are similar to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s and I greatly admire his way of thinking about foreign policy issues. So eighteen months ago, I would have given an answer quite similar to the one he gives.
But I think it’s clear enough that the combination of a calmer situation in Iraq with the dawn of a crisis in the global financial system and the arrival of a worldwide recession has made diplomatic engagement with Iran considerably less pressing today than it was eighteen months ago. I still think the basic strategy he lays out is a good one, and something an Obama administration ought to pursue, but it’s just not the case that this is as pressing as it was a little while back.
Somewhat similarly, something I’ve been wrestling with lately is the fact that I’m not, personally, someone who’s normally taken a huge interest in environmental topics. And it’s still the case that on the domestic front there are a few topics that are closer to my heart. At the same time, there’s an objective urgency about climate where it makes a big, big, big difference whether we do something in 2009 rather than 2019 that doesn’t exist in the same ways for some other topics. There are a lot of policy areas where “things could be better” and even where quick reform would make a big difference. But responsible leadership needs to tackle topics with an eye on the extent to which they’re actually pressing emergencies rather than just festering sources of injustice.
Previous in TP Media
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.