As he takes the oath in this aptly named month, Barack Obama is faced with looking both forward and back over an enormous list of national problems.
Steering the country through economic minefields will obviously take almost all of his administration’s energies but, to the extent that present difficulties are rooted in the disastrous Bush years, the past can’t be totally ignored.
In cataloguing the major frauds and deceptions, Frank Rich in the New York Times asserts, “The more we learn about where all the bodies and billions were buried on our path to ruin, the easier it may be for our new president to make the case for a bold, whatever-it-takes New Deal.”
In his interview, George Stephanopoulos asked the President-Elect about appointing a special prosecutor to “investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping” and got an ambivalent response, “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
Those who were outraged by the Bush-Cheney assault on traditional American freedoms may be disappointed by such hesitation but will have to consider the priorities of doing things right for the future against punishing the wrongs of the past.