President Barack Obama has been in office for only about two weeks and, already, things have begun to change.
Admittedly, no cherubim came down from the heavens-Hillary Clinton was right on that count-but we have already witnessed the undoing of several aspects of Dubya's neoconservative agenda.
Obama has already announced that he will close Guantanamo Bay within a year and has issued an executive order repealing the so-called global gag rule put in place by Bush II (who was undoing the work of Clinton, who was undoing the work of Bush I…). Another type of change has also become evident-the Republicans are now a united opposition party. The president's stimulus plan failed to garner a single Republican vote in the House.
Obama has set a fairly liberal-looking course during his first two weeks in office, but he will need to be cautious because, as both new president and liberal messiah, he has much less freedom than one might imagine.
Obama is beginning his term with an unprecedented amount of expectations on his broad, handsome shoulders. (Sorry, I seem to have channeled Silvio Berlusconi). A Gallup Poll found his approval rating shortly after entering office to be at a near-unprecedented 69 percent. But people are notoriously fickle, especially when optimism soars, and any missteps on Obama's part could give him a bloody nose from which recovery will be difficult.
PolitiFact.com, apparently willing to rain on the parade, compiled a list of Obama's campaign promises. It is not entirely accurate, but since public perception is all that matters, that fact is irrelevant.
It lists 510 promises with accompanying quotations. Its tally so far: Promises Kept: 6, Stalled: 1, In the Works: 17, Compromised: 1, No Action: a daunting 484. It goes without saying--but what job would I have if I didn't say it?--that Obama will be under intense scrutiny for each and every one of those promises.
Such are the pitfalls of being "The Great One."
And so, we come to the razor's edge on which Obama must walk. We have already seen that some Republicans are attempting to invigorate their party and their constituencies by mounting symbolic resistance to the new administration.
If Obama veers too far left, Republicans will make life very difficult for him. This would go against Rule No. 1 of political heroism: never let them see you sweat.
An easy fix, you may think: Obama can simply do what most presidents do and charge like the Light Brigade toward the center. Unfortunately, things are no longer that simple. The powers on the extreme left feel as though Obama is indebted to them. They helped him defeat the Inevitable Miss Clinton, and if he moves too far toward the center, you can be sure he will face their wrath. Markos Moulitsas and his charmingly-named "Kossacks" have already attacked Obama over a few of his more centrist moves.
One can still feel that the attitude permeates among these activists - stated most bluntly (and with a pinch of Orwell) by Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org in 2004 - that "now it's our party: we bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back."
Obama is viewed by these elements as their property, and they will not hesitate to ill-use him if they don't think he's pursuing their interests with all his strength.
Obama must row carefully between the Scylla and Charybdis of too much partisanship and not enough. But hey - it's a heavy lies the crown sort of thing.
Eric Chianese is an English junior. His column appears weekly.
