Almost simultaneously with the state Legislature’s convening its 2009 session, a new U.S. president with a far different agenda than President Bush’s will be inaugurated. Along with him will come Cabinet appointees with drastically changed marching orders to serve the public interest, not corporate loyalties.
Though Idaho’s dominant Republican political class boasts its conservatism as being redder than most, it would be folly for Idaho to resist the new Washington as too liberal for its tastes rather than seizing on obvious opportunities.
For at least the next four years and possibly eight, President Obama will abandon destructive Bush policies that opened public lands to extraction industries. Air and water will no longer be the pollution dumping grounds for Bush friends in industry. “Green” will be in again.
Against that backdrop of change lies opportunity. The Obama presidency will end the hemorrhaging of billions of dollars into the Iraq sinkhole and redirect spending to domestic reconstruction that’ll create millions of jobs and worthwhile community projects to modernize America’s neglected roads, schools, dams, bridges and waterworks. Will Idaho Gov. Butch Otter and state lawmakers be quick with a list of Idaho projects for Washington to fund?
Energy reform will be big, too. Is Idaho ready for the inevitable movement to solar and wind?
Happily, Idaho will have access to the new administration. Newly elected U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick will be the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation and, as a practical matter, may be far more important to the state than the delegation’s three more senior Republicans.
Now that’s real change, too
