The re-election of President Barack Obama was decisive as it will be consequential these next four years.
With tough decisions to be made about comprehensive immigration policy, implementing healthcare and Wall Street reform, the president will finally get the chance to enshrine his legacy without worrying about Republicans hitting the reset button.
The great unknown about the president’s agenda in 2009 reflects how solid his performance has been in office and what we can expect in a second term. But campaigns often leave out big ideas, focusing to a fault on fashioning the other candidate as out of touch and unqualified for the job, rather than running on the candidates own policy accomplishments.
After electing Obama on “Hope and Change” in 2008, the unprecedented demographics that turned out to vote for the president expected a transformational figure who would disrupt business as usual in Washington. However, as we’ve learned and matured with the president, idealism can only get you so far.
“Few if any expect him to seriously change Washington anymore; most voters just seemed to want him to make it function,” said Peter Baker of The New York Times.
With a Democratic Senate and Republican House, the president will have to revamp his political bona fides of bipartisanship if he hopes to avoid the fiscal cliff in January-a combination of expiring tax cuts and budget cuts agreed upon during the debt ceiling debacle last August.
Gov. Mitt Romney made overtures to bipartisanship in his concession speech last Tuesday, which Republican’s can choose to accept as the main takeaway from this Democratic-leaning election cycle.
“At a time like this we can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing,” Romney said.
 “Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work, and we citizens also have to rise to occasion.”
Now that unemployment is just below 8 percent and the economy is adding more jobs each month, the president can re-focus on matters of significant importance.
Mentioning the threat of climate change and long lines at the voting polls in his victory speech Obama indicated that we might finally take part in a substantive debate on the irrefutable contribution of science, as well as possibly reforming the mechanics of voting to expand access to the franchise.
As his agenda moves forward, so will the country, after 4 long years.
“While our road has been hard,” Obama said in his speech, “we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.”