Obama faces challenges in bringing change to Washington

WASHINGTON — If there was a single constant in Barack Obama's journey to the White House, it was his promise to bring change — to Washington, to the country, to the world.

"It's been a long time coming," he said in his Chicago acceptance speech, "but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America."

It doesn't take a cynic, though, to wonder how much change he'll bring to Washington, a town so rooted in its own history, institutions, culture and habits that it tends to shape others more than they mold it, as other presidents have learned before.

"These guys all come to town with a naivete beyond belief," said Terry Sullivan, associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jimmy Carter, for example, got off on the wrong foot by mistaking his election mandate for permission to make policy without fully consulting House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Bill Clinton fired key staff that oversaw press travel, a move that needlessly riled the White House press corps.

Obama, though, heads to the White House at an extraordinary time, said Stephen Hess, presidential scholar with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"Change comes about when the conditions are right," he said. "Change comes about with people who have the capacity to do it and the skill to do it."

Americans are grinding through two costly and inconclusive wars. Some 9.5 million people can't get work. Nearly 47 million can't afford health insurance. The national debt is $10.5 trillion, and the government will borrow another $1 trillion to pay its bills in the year that began Oct. 1.

In the face of those kinds of challenges, said Hess, the country appears to be willing to try something new.

"There are times when we want presidents to catch their breath," said Hess. "That's not the case now."

The country's economic woes, for example, have made free-market conservatives eager to endorse the $700-billion bailout of the country's financial industry. That signals to some a readiness to deal on other economic-related issues that have long been locked in stalemate, such as health insurance.

There could be room for compromise, also, on the future of U.S. combat forces in Iraq, now that budget woes have added to anti-war pressures to start bringing Americans home, just as Iraqi politicians have called for the U.S. troops to leave by 2012.

The high joblessness rate suggests Obama could make good on his campaign promise to prime the economic pump with some $50 billion in public works spending, a measure that would bring change quickly to businesses and employees put to work building bridges, repairing roads and improving schools nationwide.

Partisanship is pretty much here to stay, but Obama's goal ending its most rancorous forms may be within reach.

"It is attainable, but I think it is a very hard needle to thread," said Sullivan. Politicians, he said, "want this stuff to go away, as long as the other guy goes first."

Obama could do that. Two possible gestures of goodwill: naming a Republican to his cabinet - Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is often mentioned - or retaining Robert Gates as Defense Secretary.

On Thursday, Obama tapped fellow Chicagoan Rep. Rahm Emanuel to serve as White House chief of staff. The pick drew immediate criticism from House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who assailed Emanuel as a fierce partisan.

Emanuel, a former White House aide to Clinton, is known among Democrats, however, as an ideological centrist, though one with a competitive personality and sharp elbows.

Ultimately what matters to members of Congress, though, is how he treats them, their constituents and their advice. A president can hear a lot just by listening, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, and Obama spent more than a decade listening to others as a community activist, then state legislator, in Illinois.

He earned a similar reputation in the Senate, where his penchant for incisive questions, and informed follow-up, set him apart from many of his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Presidents have little time for consensus building: they're putting out fires instead.

But observers are counting on Obama to help bring politicians together to solve problems.

"He will give an ear to all people, and that hasn't happened for a long time, that they think they've been brought to the table," said Richmond Mayor Douglas Wilder. "Obama can use the bully pulpit, can use his skills, to not only unite people but to convince people to believe in themselves and to believe that they can make things happen."

Two decades ago, Wilder, the grandson of slaves, became the first black person ever elected governor of a state, Virginia. He doubted he would ever see an African-American elected to the White House, but he saw it Tuesday.

"It's almost the breaking of a spell," he said. "It's finishing it, by saying we sink or swim together."

In the end, that may be the biggest change of all Obama brings to the White House, to Washington, to the country and to the world. Just watching him and his family board Air Force One, head up to Camp David for the weekend or host guest for an East Room dinner will change hearts and minds in immeasurable ways.

"It says that we are showing by deed, as well as by word, what is meant by our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our founding and our purpose for being," said Wilder. "It says 'Yes you can. Yes anybody can.'"

Some things, though, aren't going to be changed by the president's temperament, background or the color of his skin — the Constitution will see to that.

He'll still need 60 votes to break a Senate filibuster, 218 to secure a House majority and committee cooperation to get his budgets authorized and his nominations approved.

"There's going to be change in foreign policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, health care and energy," said Thomas O'Donnell, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. "But the first time this guy's program is brought up in Congress for a vote, he's no longer an African-American president."