Obama’s First Priority Should Be The Economy

You are referring to the world trade negotiations, the so-called Doha round?
Exactly. Coming back to something you asked about, this would also be a way to compensate for the possible decline in foreign aid. Trade is a much better development tool, say, for poorer countries in Africa that could then expand their agricultural and basic manufactured exports to the United States. So that would be a good way to compensate for falling off on aid dollars.

And on the environmental issues, obviously there will be a change from the Bush administration's beginnings.
The environment is another area where there will be high expectations. And yes, the new administration, I expect, will lean toward an environmental negotiation rather than away from it, as the Bush administration tended to do. But particularly in this economic context, it's not going to be easy. No one's going to be excited about carbon taxes, even cap-and-trade systems that could add some cost or force societies to make trade-offs between economic growth and environmental constraints. This is not an environment-no pun intended-in which it will be easy to do that, particularly when you also add in the reality that countries like India and China are going to be particularly reluctant to accept limits at a time when their rates of economic growth are falling. So while the disposition to do something in this area is doubtlessly greater, the ability to translate that into meaningful international agreements is an open question.

And on the personalities he wants to choose, again there was some talk that he might ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to stay on, or Treasury Secretary Paulson to stay on, but I can't imagine either one wanting to do so.
The short answer is, I don't know. Let me put it this way: I think both of them have distinguished themselves in their jobs, and when people are looking at the Bush presidency, two of the bright spots will clearly be the performances of Bob Gates and Hank Paulson. Whether that translates into them being asked and then agreeing to stay on, I have no idea. But what they also represent are people of competence and experience, and also people who would not really be classified as either partisan or ideological. So to me the bigger question is not necessarily whether these two individuals are asked to stay on and whether they agree, but whether people like them are then brought into government. Because again, to me they are both refreshing and almost old-fashioned examples of public service and public servants. People who come in, roll their sleeves up, and get the job done.

Would you advise Obama to make an early trip to Europe, to a NATO meeting or something like that? I remember President John F. Kennedy did that in his first days.
It wouldn't be my first priority if I were him. I would think the priority should be more on the financial and economic side, and I don't see particularly in Europe right now any crisis or challenge of equal proportion. So I would say the near-term foreign policy challenges are probably Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, still a little bit of Iraq. You then have longer-term foreign policy challenges of how to deal with the gap between the challenges of globalization and the existing institutional architecture. But I would think the first priority for the new president has got to be the economy. He's going to inherit an economy in recession. We're talking about significant negative growth, and turning that around, I would think, is the necessary and right focus for our new president.

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