From an interview about a recent White House history anthology:
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To keep the country truly safe, President Obama will have to watch out for the special interests that see their own good as more important than the country's or the world's interests. Since a lot of these interests control cash flows to political campaigns, that will require a lot of intestinal fortitude.
The president will also have to watch out for fundamentalists of every stripe who seek to impose their agendas and beliefs on people here and in places like the Middle East. When you see your reward as coming entirely in the hereafter, and the world you have now as completely expendable in getting there, you tend to make some pretty bad -- if not horrific -- decisions.
Obama will also have to act on a wide array of environmental issues, such as climate change and species extinction , as well as the alternative fuel supply and food supply questions they raise. That will mean standing up to a *lot* of special interests.
And my hope for President Obama is that he's willing to be not-well-liked in the same way another White House occupant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was when he joked to a visiting band leader of the opposite political party, "Millions of people hate my guts!"
"Change we can believe in" isn't going to be easy. But we'd best get on with it.
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http://thencbla.blogspot.com/2009/04/voices-from-our-white-house-mark-london.html