Let me begin by saying that I like Barack Obama. While I am unlikely to agree with every decision he makes, he appears likeable and intellectually engaged. He represents a welcome change from his predecessor George W. Bush, whose intellectual processes often appeared somewhat less than rigorous, who often seemed to thumb his nose at world opinion, and under whose watch the US banking system nearly imploded. Where Bush often seemed intellectually detached, Obama appears highly engaged, sometimes to the point of micromanaging. This is witnessed by the fact that one also sees very little of many of his key cabinet secretaries. Hillary Clinton immediately comes to mind. Whatever happened to Hillary? Is she being waterboarded at Guantanamo? Hidden away in Dick Cheney’s underground lair? One wonders. But I digress.

Obama seems impressive in that he is young, intelligent, physically fit, a family man, and very well educated. He also appears to represent the best of the American Dream, in that this black son of a single white mother, whose family had neither wealth nor connections could one day become president of the most powerful nation on earth. Obama the president has inherited a litany of problems: the financial meltdown, a staggering federal debt built up over many years, other rapidly rising international powers, frayed foreign relations, the Israeli-Palestinian situation, two wars, a hyperpartisan and highly polarised electorate, lagging national productivity, a growing underclass, and falling standards of living, education and healthcare. The list goes on. These issues could hobble any president, let alone one who sometimes appears to walk on water.

One issue I have been watching with heightened interest is the push to enact some kind of meaningful health care reform in the US. Being Canadian, and feeling somewhat blessed by our own healthcare system, which is not without a few faults, I have taken a keen interest in watching how the health care reform initiative is managed in the US. In the early summer, Obama had started the process but then stepped back and let others run with it (or not), and largely allowed his opponents to define the debate, most notably in the summer’s town hall meetings which seemed to be dominated by a highly vocal and loud minority who likely received their marching orders from the highly effective and shrill Republican Propaganda machine. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the folks at Fox News are not exactly known for subtlety of their messages, nor particularly for presenting both sides of highly complex issues. Many of the folks at Fox News are opinionators not journalists. Bill O’Reilly may be the exception occasionally but typically Fox News and the Republican Party appear to be joined at the hip. And so we had talk of Death Panels (thank you Sarah Palin), comparisons of Obama to Hitler, questions about Obama’s birthplace, and various other whispers designed to question and undermine Obama’s legitimacy and paint the issue in obscene terminology that often bore no resemblance to reality. They’re going to kill Grandma said the right. The fact that no such policy ever existed is of little importance.

For much of the summer of 2009, Obama was missing in action on the health care file. Perhaps he was working on his golf game. It the fall, he finally appeared to become reengaged on the issue. Obama has made health care a pivotal issue of his presidency. And many prominent Republicans have proposed that reform be stopped so as to make it appear that Obama can’t get anything done.

My advice to president Obama on this issue and any others that are among his priority list are to approach them the way George W. Bush might have. Not in terms of policy, but more in terms of tactics. What do I mean by this? As stated earlier, many people have questioned GWB’s intellectual rigour or lack thereof. While I will not comment further on that important facet of Bush’s character, I will say the following. Whatever one thought of Bush and the relative wisdom of many of his policies, one thing can not be denied but is often forgotten, is that Bush for all his faults, was a relentless campaigner. He appeared to be in campaign mode most of the time. During the runup to the launch of the Iraq war, hardly a day went by without Bush making some campaign style speech somewhere designed to drum up support for the coming war in Iraq. This went on for about a year and a half, before the actual assault on Iraq actually began on March 20,2003. Bush for all his tortured syntax and mangled english, was a master propagandist. No doubt this had something to do with the bare knuckle tactics of Karl C. Rove and Dick Cheney. Regardless of who or what made it possible, Bush took the lead to relentlessly push his pet projects, day in and day out in the media.

Relentless campaigning is one key thing that president Obama might learn from Bush, to push hard for what he believes in and to remember that in a sense, the president is always in campaign mode. Since summer, it seems again that Obama is re-energised on a number of issues, but he would be wise to remember that the exercise of the presidency is a marathon and not a sprint. He will need much energy and determination to push for what he believes in. The challenges facing the US are many. I hope he is up to the task.