By Janet Raloff
Barack Obama has proven to be an impresario at selling new policies — and at selling himself as the best man to implement them. On the stump a year ago he promised a no-nonsense, let’s-fix-this approach to the nation’s mounting social and economic ills. His campaign pledges ranged from making health care insurance universally affordable to fixing schools to assuring that tax credits supporting industrial research and development wouldn’t expire.
And, particularly encouraging to scientists, Obama pledged that research agencies would receive better funding based on smarter criteria. Climate protection would be a priority. So would new national strategies aimed at conserving energy and other natural resources.
Science would not be muzzled in the pursuit of economic agendas or environmental deregulation; it would be embraced as the foundation for federal policies. Wasteful, duplicative and pure-pork programs would be eliminated. New policies would reverse the trend of outsourcing industrial jobs overseas.