by Jules Witcover

As President Obama continues his effort to rebuild America's image abroad after eight years of a unilateral foreign policy, the burdens of the past weigh heavily on his shoulders.

For a man who as a presidential candidate campaigned on such an ambitious agenda for the future -- health care for all Americans, a purer environment, a world at peace and all the rest -- he has had to spend much of his time looking back.

The Asian trip has been part of a record-setting first presidential year of travel abroad, eight journeys to 20 countries by the time he returns next week. One obvious objective is reassuring the world that the United States in the Obama years intends no longer to go it alone, but rather to work in a restored spirit of global consensus.

At the same time, the president has had to concentrate on putting the country back on its feet at home in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse, the worst since the Great Depression. And abroad, he is still deeply occupied in the two wars that grew out of the 2001 terrorist attacks, one legitimate in Afghanistan, the other elective in Iraq.

From the outset, Obama chose not to allow the imperatives of dealing with imposed past problems to prevent him from simultaneously trying to advance his campaign agenda, starting with major health-care reform. Doing so has brought him heavy criticism for trying to do too many things out of the gate.

The words attributed to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, that "you never want a serious crisis to be wasted" -- that is, failing to capitalize on the public awareness of it -- is an aggressive and even courageous attitude for a results-oriented executive. But acting on it does compound the workload of an already demanding job.

Even as he dashes around the Pacific Rim, Obama is carrying with him the various proposals from his military, political and diplomatic advisers on what course to take in Afghanistan. He has before him four varying options: from his chief commander in that country, from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the top Pentagon generals, from his ambassador in Kabul, who is a former military commander there, and others including Vice President Joe Biden.

In his stopover in Japan, Obama was confronted with editorial and public calls for him to become the first American president to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only cities ever hit and devastated by an atomic bomb, dropped by American planes. He demurred, indicating his schedule would not permit the visits now, but he did say on Japanese television and at a press conference he would be "honored" to go there later in his presidency.

Notably, however, he dodged a question on whether dropping the bombs had been the right decision.

Presidential deeds and actions of the past seem ever to crowd in on the ambitious agenda Obama set for his new administration. Upon his inauguration there was wide public anticipation of another First Hundred Days that marked President Franklin D. Roosevelt's beginnings, even as he struggled with the banking crisis left on his doorstep in 1933.

Obama's marathon secret reassessment of where to take the nation in Afghanistan is, unfortunately for him, reminiscent of Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter's agonized retreat to Camp David in 1979, when he held multiple meetings with various policy kibitzers on what to do to get the country out of its economic doldrums.

But it's clear that Obama recognizes the crucial nature of the decision he faces in this reassessment. He must consider the sacrifices he contemplates asking of more military men and women and their families, and the ramifications for his administration's own agenda, now largely a captive of the challenges of the past.

After Bill Clinton's eight White House years, he was said to have lamented that he had encountered no major policy crisis the solution of which would enable him to be ranked as a great president. Barack Obama does not have to worry about that. His full plate of leftover woes provides more than enough grounds for greatness, if he can extricate the country from them.

 

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