OP-ED: Faith in Obama (Today's Zaman, TURKEY)

President Barack Obama is in the oval office after a gruesome race run not on personal popularity but against established prejudices and cleavages as well. We wish him the best of luck.

He will need an abundance of it even though he was swept into office riding on a wave of optimism. Americans seem to be confident that he can repair the economy and get over the crisis as evinced in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. They are willing to give him enough time to carry out the repairs.

The electorate believes him, but their optimism is somewhat tempered by the colossal scale of the nation's problems at home and abroad, as the poll shows. Yet the new US president's cautious approach to recovery, as stated in his speeches, seems to have convinced the public that a gradual improvement in the economy can be achieved in a matter of years. The poll found that two-thirds of respondents think the economic recession will last two years or longer. In their opinion, the timeframe for economic recovery is not shorter that that for reforming the healthcare system or ending the war in Iraq. The previous government spawned these problems in a matter of eight years; the electorate feels that it is not reasonable to expect the new president to untangle these problems in an unrealistically short period of time.

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