“The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”
                                                                           - Oliver Wendell Holmes

We’re just about a week into the Obama presidency and our new president has given us some positive insight into what we can expect from his administration.  From the sharp break with the policies of the Bush administration to which he addressed himself in his inaugural address, to his immediate push on the economic stimulus package, to his immediate appointment of former Senate majority leader George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Obama has shown he is ready and willing to tackle the broad range of difficult tasks facing him.

Where George Bush sought to spend his final days in office on a retirement tour and chose to virtually ignore the conflagration taking place in Gaza, Obama took immediate steps to address the need for the United States to insert itself into a leadership role in the continuing search for peace. 

Where Bush spent his final days ensconcing his political-appointee minions in permanent government positions in an attempt to retain a measure of neoconservative influence in the Obama administration, and set about issuing a series of executive orders to destroy the environment and dismantle what little government regulation remains, Obama hit the ground running.  As soon as he had the authority, Obama stayed all of the Bush regulatory changes that had not yet been implemented.

Although some view Obama’s inaugural address skeptically saying, “President Obama uttered no words today that will be quoted in a hundred years,” his speech delivered more than rhetorical excitement.  In his speech, Obama spoke truths the Bush administration spent eight years trying to either ignore or hide. 

He broke with Bush in the first minutes of the address when he said, “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”  And he escorted George W. Bush’s “politics of fear” policy out of Washington when he said, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Obama has acted decisively to implement a number of his promises from the election campaign–those which could be implemented with the stroke of a pen.  In a sweeping series of orders issued in the two days following his inauguration, Obama provided a sense of his administration’s break with the past eight years - 

• He detailed a process for shuttering the Guantánamo detention camps within the coming year.  
• He threw out the use of torture techniques that had been authorized by Bush and Cheney.  
• He shut down the CIA’s black sites and terminated its extraordinary rendition program.  
• He explicitly reaffirmed the government’s commitment to abide rigorously by the commitments the United States made to the world under the Geneva Conventions and rejected the contrary opinions rendered by the Bush Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel between September 11, 2001 and the hour Bush left office.

Later in the week, he proceeded to act upon several of his campaign promises as he -

•  Directed military leaders to end war in Iraq.
•  Nullified the Bush attempts to make the timely release of presidential records more difficult.
• Issued an executive order asking all new hires at the agencies to sign a form affirming that no political appointee offered them the job solely on the basis of political affiliation or contribution.
• Issued an executive order banning registered lobbyists or lobbying firms from giving gifts in any amount or any form to executive branch employees.

He went his campaign promise of having at least one Republican in his cabinet one better by retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and nominating Ray LaHood to serve as Secretary of Transportation.

Today, Obama tackled the migraine headache of undoing Bush’s damage to the climate when he told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider California’s request, denied by Bush, to impose stricter limits on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions.  These emissions are a significant contributor to global warming, and as many as 18 other states have indicated they may follow California’s lead by putting tailpipe emissions standards that are tougher than federal requirements into effect.

Of course, most of these items have been relatively easy to accomplish since, except for the confirmation of his cabinet appointees, none have required the approval of Congress.  And, it is reasonable to expect Obama will not be able to keep all of the roughly 500 promises he made during his campaign.

But what he has shown in his first week in office is that his campaign mantra of “Change We Can Believe In” was not hollow.  In just a few short days, Obama has already done more good than Bush 43 did in eight years.