And so America has chosen Barack Obama as our next chief executive. Now it can truly be said that every young American can dream of growing up to someday become President of the United States. The Examiner offers its sincere congratulations and best wishes to President-elect Obama. There is no time to waste in bringing the country together, so it is vitally important he act wisely and prudently between now and his inauguration if he is to become leader of the nation, not just a partisan political leader.
The time for partisanship is past. President-elect Obama faces challenges that in many respects are among the most difficult in American history. We take him at his word since the Democratic convention that he genuinely wants to move beyond the toxic political rhetoric that soured so many Americans and to unify America. To that end, we encourage President-elect Obama to take these three important first steps towards unifying Americans:
• Build an administration that has the wisdom, experience and energy to address today’s challenges. Here is a priceless opportunity to reach across the aisle – as he promised to do on the campaign trail – and create a genuinely bipartisan cabinet made up of the best qualified people regardless of party.
• Create a broadly supported national security plan to fight terrorism by working with U.S. military leaders to bolster freedom in Afghanistan and complete their mission in Iraq with honor and victory. This is the place to prepare the long-term tools needed to protect the United States from militant terrorism.
• Stabilize the economy by recognizing that the government’s recent bailouts have yet to achieve their declared goals and by resisting the growing clamor for more financial rescues. Working in a bipartisan fashion is especially vital in this area if the new president is to meet immediate economic challenges, while laying the groundwork for a stable economic future that includes safeguards to protect our free market economy.
Beyond these three priorities, we encourage President-elect 0bama to begin now in seeking a national consensus for solving these critical problems:
• Control federal spending. The key to doing this is creating a bipartisan and transparent process for mending the safety net, especially Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Challenge Democrats and Republicans to accept a political “hold harmless” pact, then apply the common-sense ideas that made the military base closure process so successful.
• Rebalance the tax system – President-elect Obama has promised to shift the tax burden to help the middle class, but this should not be done at the expense of the entrepreneurial freedom that generated this nation’s unprecedented prosperity and economic opportunity.
• Health care and insurance also require bipartisanship if all Americans are be covered without compromising the quality of care or patient choice.
• Develop a contemporary energy policy that makes the best use of all of America’s abundant resources, including oil and gas, while also fast-tracking clean-coal, expanding nuclear and realizing the value of alternatives like wind and thermal.
These things can be accomplished only if President-elect Obama puts the national interest ahead of the inevitable pressures from special interest groups like trial lawyers, liberal activists such as ACORN, and labor unions with hyper-partisan agendas to roll-back reforms they opposed. The nation has an historic opportunity for progress on a broad front. Let’s not sacrifice this moment on the altar of continued polarization.
