In 18 days, Barack Obama will be sworn in as President of the United States – the 44th in history and the first African-American in history to get the job. While I am glad he won and am very much looking forward to seeing what “change” he will bring to this country – I wouldn’t want to be him on January 20th. In the entire 233 year history of this country, no President has had so many problems and issues to deal with on his first day. I know that he has an agenda and a plan for the direction he wants to take this country, but he’ll have to wait until after he cleans up the mess that our current President will leave behind.

According to his website, www.change.gov, President-Elect Obama has a broad agenda that deals with everything from education and health care to technology and civil rights. For example, when it comes to education, Obama plans to address the dropout crisis, recruit new teachers and retain existing ones, and expand high quality after school programs. While these are great ideas and things that this country needs – I wonder how much time he will have to do them due to the fact that most of his attention has to be focused on the current state of this nation.

The first and most important problem facing President-Elect Obama is that our country is in a very bad recession right now. Corporate giants like KB Toys, Polaroid and Washington Mutual all went bankrupt, The financial, auto and even airline industries are begging the Federal Government for money to keep them afloat, Americans nationwide are losing their homes to foreclosure, and people are getting laid off left and right. I’m sure even the country’s best financial wizards have no idea how to fix this mess, but while all we can do is sit back and hope for a turnaround – Obama has to jump right in the middle of this and somehow fix it.

Another problem facing our President-Elect in less than three weeks are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are many people in this country that want the wars to end and see our troops come home. Obama plans to execute a phased withdrawal and have all of our troops home by 2010, but quite frankly – I don’t see how that is possible. Fighting and suicide attacks are on the rise in both countries, and withdrawing from a country that is in total chaos is not possible. I am not stating my opinion on the wars in any way, I am just saying that dealing with this issue could be very difficult for our President-Elect.

Having spent the last 12 days in Hawaii, Obama has now returned to Chicago and plans to move to Washington this weekend. With less than three weeks until the end of the Bush Administration and the beginning of the Obama Administration, I hope the President-Elect enjoyed his time in Hawaii and enjoys the next 18 days with his family – because once he is sworn in – he will have hardly any free time at all.

Good luck President-Elect Obama – you’re gonna need it.