Profile
Barack Obama was elected President of the United States November 2008. This article was published after Barack Obamas first 100 days in the White House.
So far, the model for President Obama is less FDR and more Ronald Reagan, in a liberal incarnation.
From his ambitious effort to reverse the direction of government to the abrupt shift in style and tone from his widely unpopular predecessor, Obama in his first 100 days has laid the groundwork for a new Democratic era.
He has signed the most expensive single piece of legislation in American history with the nearly $800 billion fiscal stimulus that reshapes the role of government in energy, education, health care, infrastructure and science.
He has ordered troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. He has sought to forge a new American image on three foreign trips, including major summits in Europe and Latin America. He has reversed limits on stem cell research, ordered the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and released secret legal memos on terror interrogations.
He has set in motion a monumental change in environmental policy with the Environmental Protection Agency finding that global warming is a threat to public health. He has presented a budget that would raise taxes on the wealthy and slash major weapons programs.
Polling similar to Reagan's
Republicans marvel at his poll numbers. The polling also, according to Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, bears a striking resemblance to former President Reagan's: Obama enjoys stratospheric personal approval, even among many Republicans, with 73 percent of those polled saying they view him favorably. At the same time, many express skepticism about his policies, especially on deficit spending.
Polls also show that party polarization is more intense than ever, but Obama has demography on his side, said John Kenneth White, a professor of politics at Catholic University.
"The old Reagan majority, which was white, middle-class, suburban and married with kids at home, now gets you 46 percent of the electorate, which is what McCain got," White said.
Facing an economic downturn early in his first term, Reagan didn't panic, White said. "People sensed there was a crisis and they were willing to give him time. So while he took a beating in 1982, they weren't willing to give up on him or Reaganomics, and I think the public is more willing to accord Obama time than a lot of people think."
Job approval ratings are the equivalent of presidential capital. They are a bellwether of Obama's ability to enact his agenda and the dangers that could shred his presidency. Pivotal battles lie just ahead: Action on health care and climate will shift this summer to Congress. Pakistan is growing more unstable by the day, and liberal discontent is surfacing over Obama's escalation of the Afghanistan war without an exit strategy.
Even as White House political czar David Alexrod played down his boss' first 100 days as an artificial "Hallmark holiday," the White House is commemorating it with another prime-time press conference on Wednesday. Dismissing worries about overexposure, Obama, like Reagan, has shown a command of the bully pulpit. He has also avoided the mistakes of his Democratic predecessor, former President Bill Clinton, exerting rigorous policy discipline, sidestepping distractions and maintaining strong party unity.
"It's actually been a pretty fruitful 100 days," said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and former top GOP political strategist. "The gig on him is he's trying to do too much, but from those criteria, he's doing well and his numbers are still very, very strong. You can pick apart his policies, which I would, but we had a campaign, and basically he said what he's going to do, and that's what he's doing."
A former top GOP aide in Congress and the Bush White House put it more starkly: "His numbers are so good, he's more than a president, he's like a rock star."
Although critics accused Obama of "outsourcing" the stimulus to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat said, "Make no mistake, President Obama has the recovery package that President Obama wants."
Momentous financial crisis
Asked about her relationship with the White House, Pelosi said, "We work together. We're two separate branches of government. His success is important to our country. We all want him to succeed and we want to help him do that."
Obama took office amid a historic financial crisis and deep global economic contraction, and so far has navigated unpopular bank bailouts and the impending bankruptcy of at least one U.S. automaker without significant public backlash. Yet enacting a stimulus program was the easy part.
The banking crisis is far from resolved. Government involvement in the banks - and political resistance to additional injections of money - is leading inexorably to backdoor nationalization via ownership of common stock, with its attendant political and financial risks. A Government Accountability Report last week found that stimulus dollars are trickling out much more slowly than was initially advertised, weakening their ability to goose the economy.
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