The nation’s agricultural and food policies are stuck in the past — the 19th century, to be exact — and food activists are hoping the new president will change the way the nation eats and farms, bringing the United States into the 21st century.
It remains an open question, however, whether he will.
Although Mr. Obama has proposed changes in the nation’s farm and rural policies and emphasizes the connection between diet and health, there is nothing to indicate he has a special interest in a radical makeover of the way food is grown and sold.
Still, the dream endures. To advocates who have watched scattered calls for changes in food policy gather political and popular momentum, Mr. Obama looks like their kind of president.
Not only does he seem to possess a more-sophisticated palate than some of his recent predecessors, but he will also take office in an age when organic food is mainstream, cooking competitions are among the top-rated TV shows and books calling for an overhaul in the American food system are best sellers.
“People are so interested in a massive change in food and agriculture that they are dining out on hope now. That is like the main ingredient,” said Eddie Gehman Kohan, a blogger from Los Angeles who started Obamafoodorama.com to document just about any conceivable link between Mr. Obama and food, whether it is a debate on agriculture policy or an image of Mr. Obama rendered in tiny cupcakes.
“He is the first president who might actually have eaten organic food, or at least eats out at great restaurants,” Ms. Gehman Kohan said.
Still, no one is sure just how serious Mr. Obama really is about the politics of food. So like mystery buffs studying the book jacket of “The Da Vinci Code,” interested eaters dissect every aspect of his life as it relates to the plate.
The reality, as with everything else surrounding the president-elect, is that progressives may be projecting their own desires onto him, leaving far more room for disappointment than there should be.
The LGBT movement is (rightly) angry over the choice of the Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration. Economic populists — like me — are none too pleased with the economic team he’s assembled, peace activists are angry over his retention of Robert Gates as defense secretary (not to mention their puzzlement over the choice of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state), and so on.
None of this should have been a surprise — as I’ve written and so many on the left have said, Barack Obama is a cautious political centrist, albeit one with progressive instincts that have been lacking among most Democrats in recent years.
I remain hopeful that Obama will move the nation in a more humane and reformist direction, even if he does not take us as far toward social democracy as I would like.
Hank Kalet 