I grade Obama’s first 100 days

By Jennifer J. Foster

Before we undertake this analysis of President Obama’s performance over his first 100 days in office, I just want to remind everyone of the difficult circumstances facing the president: A global economic crisis the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since the Great Depression, massive deficits handed off to him by his predecessor, wars on two fronts ...

(Sounds of glass breaking, furniture being thrown, and people being hit with a marching band baton)

Sorry, folks. A band of national pundits led by Tavis Smiley had temporarily taken over my computer. But there is no need to panic; order has been restored.

As I said in the previous post, President Obama has done a decent job in his first 100 days in the White House.

On the positive side:

One of the first things the president did was to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. If you’ve followed my writings here and in the Opelika-Auburn News over the past several months, you know I am a big fan of this bill. Companies are wrong to discriminate between men and women who do equal work; thanks to this bill and the determination of one Alabama woman to turn the injustice she faced into justice for others, companies who now perpetrate this discrimination will pay—as they should—in court.

President Obama’s handling of the H1N1 flu crisis gets a thumbs-up from me so far. He has presented a calm but steady approach to the problem and had his administration taking visible roles in calming fears across the country. He’s taken full advantage of the improved government infrastructure that is allowing for the strong response, and he’s given credit where credit is due for that improved infrastructure. He’s taking lumps for not closing the border with Mexico, but doctors believe there’s no real benefit to doing that; doing it without the advice of the disease specialists would likely add to the public’s panic and make things much worse. Just keep Joe Biden away from the mikes.

(I would, however, like to know if the president got a shot of Tamiflu when he got back from Mexico a couple of weeks ago.)

On the Big Three, Obama has maintained his course as it relates to the long-term survival of the American auto manufacturing industry. He’s sticking by Chrysler, even in bankruptcy, as he should. Chapter 7 liquidation would result in a lot more unemployment and misery for families; as long as there is a viable alternative—and with Fiat, there is—it should be vigorously pursued. He needs to continue to emphasize, as he did last night, that he has no intention of the federal government staying in the auto business for a moment longer than is necessary to stabilize it; he needs to take every opportunity to endorse capitalism—for the sake of our entrepreneurs as well as his detractors.

On the banks, Obama remains engaged with a plan to help financial institutions right themselves. Again, he’s taking lumps here because credit hasn’t loosened up as quickly as it needs to, but as Lars Larsen pointed out on Larry King’s show last night, the government gave them a big, nasty lecture on irresponsible lending. That lecture was well deserved, because it was those irresponsible decisions—widespread approvals of no-money-down mortgages for people without jobs among them—that got us into this mess in the first place. So to expect the banks to turn around and begin lending to everyone again is not only unreasonable, it’s counterproductive to recovery. This is going to be a slow process; as solid investors gain confidence and get back in the game, banks’ cash flow will increase, and that will, in turn, provide the oil for the gears to get the lending process moving again. Here again, the president needs to emphasis his interest in better oversight and common-sense regulation to ensure that banks can’t play bait-and-switch with their balance sheets anymore and his determination to get Uncle Sam out of the bank ownership business as fast as reasonably possible.

On the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: I applaud the president for deferring to the judgment and advice of his military commanders on the ground in these places for the best plans going forward. Obama has never served in the military, so he will do well to give his military commanders the benefit of the doubt. Predictably, those on the left were furiout that he tweaked his commitment on a timeline for getting the troops out of Iraq, but when it became apparent to Obama that that timeline was neither good for the troops nor the Iraqis, he was man enough to admit it and adjust. At the same time, he was mulling an increase in the troop deployment in Afghanistan, which he ended up approving—again, on the advice of the military. As the Taliban closes in on Islamabad, this may end up being an even smarter decision than it was to begin with. Good for Obama, and good for us, that we have a commander-in-chief willing to listen to the men and women in uniform.

On transparency, Obama has done well. His commitment to this issue will be tested in coming months and years as his administration builds up documents and, inevitably, makes mistakes (as all administrations do). But for the short term, at least, he gets a thumbs up from he on this.

On the negative side:

I have to give him a below-average grade on his Cabinet selection process. Seriously, did they really not know that at least six nominees had problems or connections to problems with taxes? Or did they just not think anyone else would care? After all that attention the presidential appointment application received (and the fact that Rahm Emanuel was running the process), only a fool would believe that any surprises existed by the time Obama made his picks.

I’m not thrilled with some of Obama’s tactics when it comes to supporting the Big Three. In particular, I didn’t appreciate his remark this morning about hoping that the next car you buy will be an American car. It’s clear that he was swiping at foreign-owned car companies—never mind that they employ thousands of Americans in American plants that are supplied by American companies with American workers. One of the things I hated the most about the Big Three bailout was this geographic sense of superiority—that Detroit wouldn’t need help if it wasn’t for those pesky automakers who had infiltrated the South. Hey guys, guess what? That’s called competition; it’s a big part of capitalism, which you may have forgotten something about. Another example of this geographic disconnect was the dust-up with the Air Force’s new tanker contract. Obama got behind Boeing, even though a foreign company that planned something like 2,000 jobs in Mobile won the contract. What do these things have in common? U-N-I-O-N-S, that’s what. The president is developing a nasty habit of favoring unions in particular over American workers as a whole, and that’s dangerous for more than economic reasons; he’s contributing to a culture divide, and we have enough division in this country as it is.

Obama talks a good game about bipartisanship, but when it comes down to appointments in positions where he could really make a difference, he has consistently gone for the partisan and philosophical over the moderate and pragmatic. One example of this is Kathleen Sebelius. Obama would have been hard-pressed to find a nominee more controversial among Republicans (unless it was Howard Dean). But his choice of her, combined with the fact that Tom Daschle was his first choice (see above), put this country in the position of facing the H1N1 outbreak without an HHS secretary. Another example is Hilda Solis, the labor secretary. While Big Labor loved that pick, she has no credibility at all with the business community—and businesses are kind of important when it comes to the Labor Department.

Obama’s decision to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay gets a thumbs-down from me, not necessarily for the philosophy behind it (see below), but because he made the announcement without having any idea what he was going to do with the detainees being housed there. Obama allowed himself to be boxed in by liberals who demanded that announcement as one of the first things he did as president. As a result, we are still trying to figure out what to do with those detainees—and we’re finding that our European allies, while they don’t like Gitmo, aren’t so keen on taking them off our hands. The far left won this one; let’s hope it’s not at the expense of national security.

And then there are actions which only history can judge. Chief among these are his early decisions to close Gitmo and ban those infamous “enhanced interrogation techniques.“ Regardless of your personal opinion on these topics, it takes a lot of guts to make tough decisions like these, when your choices could have very real—and irreversible—consequences for Americans all over the world. I don’t know if these calls are the right ones; I hope we’re never in a position of having to choose between torturing a terrorist or two and getting information that could save hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives. But that’s a Pollyanna way of looking at the world. I just hope that Obama’s decisions turn out to be the right ones.

Another big question mark in Obama’s legacy will be this philosophy of intervening in the markets to stabilize the economy. Conservatives howled when the feds forked over billions to Wall Street banks and the Big Three. I was among those asking whether the government was calling the code on capitalism. History will decide whether the bailout and the deficit-fueled stimulus packages were worth the risk. My advice to Obama on how he can increase his chances of a favorable final analysis: Get Uncle Sam off the court and back in the umpire’s chair as soon as possible.

Finally, Obama has some opportunities coming up in which he can make some progress on his campaign promise to be the president of all Americans. Foremost among these: His first Supreme Court nomination this summer. It was learned tonight that Justice David Souter will retire after the Court’s current term. Will the president choose an interpreter or an activist? Or, will he do the smart thing and choose someone in between—a believable moderate with no political axe to grind? Given the Court’s current ideological makeup and Souter’s position as one of its liberal members, the temptation to replace him ideologically may be too much for the president to bear. But there are other opportunities: He’s lifted the ban on federal stem-cell research; he can extend an olive branch to those who value the sanctity of human life by leaving the conscience clause in place. We’ve heard talk that he was preparing for “reconciliation,“ the so-called nuclear option, to move his coming health-care plan through Congress; now that he has all but sewn up a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, he can walk the bipartisan walk by encouraging the Senate to consider his plan, and all his other legislative initiatives, along regular lines of deliberation.

All in all, I give the president a solid B-minus for his first 100 days. He has produced an above-average performance; he gets props from me for his ambitious agenda and quick start, but he loses points because his missteps were easily avoidable.

The president is well on his way. We now return you to our regularly scheduled blogging ... and the next 100 days.

Grading the grades of Obama’s first 100 days

By Jennifer J. Foster

It’s now Day 101 of the Barack Obama Administration, and—mercifully—the cable news networks have moved on to something else (sorry, Chrysler).

As I said, I missed the president’s news conference when it was carried live (and no, I wasn’t watching “Lie to Me”). So I had to wait for replay.

The up side to watching it on replay is that you get some early analysis to the speech itself. The down side to watching it on replay is that ... you get some early analysis to the speech itself.

When I can, of course, I like to catch the big events live so I can make up my own mind about how things went without the taint of national punditry getting in the way.

But that’s not always possible, so I try to make the best of it. But I’ve found that a little analysis—and I do mean a little, as in, 20 minutes or so—goes a long way.

I got home last night around 8:40 p.m. Central time, so CNN was well into its “grade-everyone-in-Washington” schtick. If you missed it (first of all, congratulations), it basically amounted to them giving viewers a five-minute time limit to vote on how various players in Washington did in the first 100 days of Obama’s administration.

Useless. Absolutely useless.

So I watched Baseball Tonight.

I clicked back over to CNN when Anderson Cooper took over, and then I listened to Larry King Live while I was working on another project. I caught bits and pieces of the news conference peppered throughout those programs as they would run ahead of discussion segments.

I found the former much more useful than the latter ... details below.

Finally, at midnight, the news conference itself was repeated in its entirety, so I got to see the pieces I hadn’t caught in excerpt or on C-SPAN replay then.

I wrote a column a few weeks ago about the 100-day mark as an early indicator of a president’s success. Historians believe it’s a false benchmark. We observe it because of the early success of President Franklin D. Roosevelt achieved against the backdrop of unprecedented global economic woe.

But FDR’s standard of success is all but impossible to match, because a similar backdrop has been missing.

Until now.

After all the scrutiny and breathless analysis about Obama’s 100-day mark, here’s what got from the pundits: The president’s political supporters want to have it both ways.

Of course it’s early in the president’s administration. Of course we are in the midst of “a global economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression,“ as the president so often says. Of course he was facing deficits before the stimulus bill.

We know all this.

But we also know that this president said he’d be ready to go on Day 1. Remember that debate with Sen. John McCain during the presidential campaign? Obama said he’d hit the ground running.

And he did. I noted in my column during his first week in office that he made some monumental decisions, not the least of which involved national security, in those first few days. Obama came into office and hit the ground running, just as he said he would do.

So why do his political supporters feel the need to remind everyone of the challenges that everyone, including the president, were well aware of on Day 1?

One particular guest on Larry King’s show last night, Tavis Smiley, was unbelievable in some of the things he said about the president. I actually stopped what I was doing and turned around to look at the TV like, “Did he just say that?“ Here are some excerpts from the transcript:

KING: All right, Tavis, we have been asking all the guests all day long to give it a—give it a number. Where do you put this, A to D? How’s he doing?

TAVIS SMILEY, HOST, “THE TAVIS SMILEY SHOW”: I think he’s doing good.

This grading thing is so—it’s such a question, Larry. And I understand why we ask it. The 100-day mark, I understand, comes from FDR. But it seems so unfair in so many ways, particularly given that this president has been up against more than any president certainly in my lifetime. When you look historically at what he is up against, it’s a unique set of situations—set of circumstances, that is.

What this book “Accountable” that you referenced tries to do is to lay out about 242 promises, Larry, that Senator Obama made on the campaign trail. My number, according to the book, is that he’s—at the clip, the pace he’s moving now, he will complete about 66 percent of what he said he was going to do in his first term.

But, in his—in his first 100 days, let’s face it, he has signed seven major bills into law. That’s seven more than George Bush did in his first 100 days.

KING: So, do you give him—you’re not going to give him a number?

SMILEY: Well, I mean, if I had to grade him, he’s clearly doing better…

KING: A letter.

SMILEY: He’s doing better than average. B-minus. B-minus.

And then, later:

KING: Tavis, with all that he had on his table, now what with this pandemic?

SMILEY: You know, this is tough, but I think he handled this just right tonight.

He was measured. He gave the American people practical suggestions for what to do. He made it very clear that he wasn’t going to panic and that we, as a country, should not panic.

I mean, you almost, on a certain level, feel sorry for Barack Obama. And I say that cautiously, because he is so gifted. He certainly gets an A in communication. He said he wanted to be transparent. I think he’s doing a good job of that. He’s doing an excellent job communicating to the American people.

But it’s in crises like these that you want someone who is measured, who is steady. And that’s what he campaigned on. If—if nothing else, he’s certainly starting to deliver on being the kind of leader that—that—that we can put our confidence in. And, with a pandemic like this, you want that. I think he handled this issue brilliantly tonight.

And still later:

KING: Tavis, how do you account for his continuing, no matter what happens, popularity?

SMILEY: Well, I think he, to Chris’ point now—and he’s absolutely right about this—continues to show that, no matter what the issue is, he’s at least well-informed, he’s on top of it, and communicate to the American—can communicate, rather, to the American people what he feels about said issue.

I mean, somebody asked me earlier tonight what I thought the storyline out of this was. I don’t know what the media is going to take out of this. I have already seen some storylines. Clearly, the comment about Chrysler and his believing that—that this—that they’re going to be OK, that is going to be news tomorrow, Larry, for sure.

But I—I sat in, quite frankly, amazement and awe looking at all that he has on his plate in the first 100 days. And for all these eight or nine issues that he at one point joked about tonight, he had a command of all of these issues.

I mean, there was nothing that came up tonight that he did not have a command of, he had an answer for them, he had done the research on. And that, I think, given certainly eight years of President Bush, with all due respect, people just feel confident about a guy who knows what he’s talking about, has something to say about the issues, and appears to be in control.

They—you can’t underestimate that.

Let me see if I get this straight: Smiley almost feels sorry for the president because he is “so gifted,“ and then he sat in amazement and awe that he had a command of and had researched eight or nine issues facing him as president.

Um ... don’t we expect our presidents to be gifted and to do research on problems and stuff? Isn’t that why we elect them?

Furthermore, Smiley is saying that Americans aren’t as concerned with the results of President Obama’s policies as they are just so confident that they have “a guy who knows what he’s talking about, has something to say about the issues, and appears to be in control.“

Are you kidding me with that? What a slap in the face to Barack Obama!!

And that is generally how I heard things go with the pundits last night: When asked to grade his performance, the president’s political supporters would hem and haw about the difficult circumstances he’s facing, and then say that he’s done either a pretty good or an above average job.

I don’t understand why they feel this is necessary. Everyone knows the difficult challenges facing the president. They are facing them themselves. Everyone knows 100 days isn’t a long time to get things done. Many Americans have been looking for jobs a lot longer than he’s been president. The irony is that by highlighting the circumstances above Obama’s success within those circumstances, the president’s political supporters actually belittled his performance—which hasn’t been bad to begin with, and therefore doesn’t need any excusing!

I guess what annoys me about all this is that you can’t on one hand say that someone will be ready to go and then make allowances/apologies/excuses for that person if his performance doesn’t measure up.

Next up: My thoughts on the president’s 100 days ... minus the pathetic apologies for the circumstances he’s facing.

Happy ‘Hallmark holiday’—Obama’s 100th day

By Jennifer J. Foster

As President Obama marks his 100th day in office today, pundits and politicos alike are weighing in on his performance so far.

CNN is having a big special tonight that will incorporate user-generated content as part of its televised coverage that will precede and follow the president’s primetime address.

Oh boy. User-generated content: The wonder of the web that places the ill-conceived opinion of every ill-informed Tom, Dick and Harry on par with the most experienced and seasoned political veterans. Ah, free speech! Caveat emptor!

SIDEBAR: Speaking of that primetime address, it will be the third of the president’s 100 days. That’s an average of one a month. Most of the networks have been cooperative, if grudgingly so, thus far (the Fox broadcast network will stick with its drama, “Lie to Me”—insert joke about the irony of a politician being upstaged about a show about lying here). But considering that it costs the networks about $10 million in ad revenue each time the president takes over their airtime (and that, you know, we have these things called cable news channels, radio and the internet), it’s only a matter of time until they run out of goodwill. END SIDEBAR

Amid all this hullabaloo, longtime politico Ed Rollins offers a sensible analysis of all the analysis of Obama’s first 100 days. Yes, Rollins is a Republican strategist. But he’s been around long enough to know what he’s talking about, and he’s middle-of-the-road enough that he hasn’t sacrificed his credibility for the sake of party identification.

The high points of Rollins’ piece:

“After the first hundred days, President Carter was viewed as potentially great, and President Clinton was viewed as a one-termer. Obviously, it didn’t turn out that way.“

“The president has an appealing style. The country is giving him high marks, but so far they are style points and not necessarily for his policies. We don’t know whether the policies will work.“

And then, there’s this:

If you’re a Democrat, the words you would use to describe the president’s first 100 days would be something like these: energetic, intense, charming, refreshing, honest, likeable, smart and competent, a leader and a positive change agent.

If you’re a Republican, the words you might use are: dangerous, inexperienced, weak, indecisive, reckless spender and liberal. Some Republicans have called him a socialist, and some in the Republican National Committee foolishly want to pass a resolution calling him this.

The truth as always lies somewhere in between.

See? I told you Rollins was good. You can read the rest of his column here.

I’ll be out of the house tonight and will miss the president’s address when it’s delivered. But I’ll catch it on late-night rerun and be back with my own analysis later.

National publicity for red-light column

By Jennifer J. Foster

You might have read my recent column in support of red-light cameras.

If not, you can read it here.

As it turns out, folks with the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running also saw the column, and they have included it in their monthly online newsletter.

You can read the newsletter—which, not surprisingly, is overflowing with good information on this issue—here.

Red-light running is serious business. People who do it kill and injure thousands of Americans a year.

So please consider joining the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running. The life you save by supporting their initiatives could very well be your own.

Specter shatters fragile GOP hopes

By Jennifer J. Foster

Republicans have long charged that U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) was a “RINO”—a Republican in Name Only.

Specter decided this morning that he agrees.

Specter, one of the most senior GOP senators in Washington, decided today that the man who registered as a Republican in 1966 will affiliate with the Democratic Party, effective immediately.

With Al Franken’s win in Minnesota, which is nearing the end of its labyrinthine journey through the courts and is all but a done deal, Specter’s switch brings Senate Democrats to the promised land of 60 votes and a filibuster-proof majority that renders GOP opposition to President Obama’s legislative agenda all but obsolete.

CNN reporter Dana Bash describes this move as “seismic,“ and she is dead on: It changes everything, everything about President Obama’s agenda and the direction this country will take over at least the next two years and probably more.

Noting in his statement about the switch that more than 200,000 Pennsylvanians left the GOP for the Democratic Party in 2008, Specter said that upon reflection since the stimulus vote, “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats” than the Republican Party.

In other words, Republicans were right; I was a RINO, after all.

But don’t think for a minute that Arlen Specter has created this political tsunami because of some eureka moment he had after long, solitary moments of personal reflection in some quiet place. On the contrary, in reality, the opposite is actually true.

Bash cited a longtime aide to Specter who told her that in recent visits with constituents and party leaders in Pennsylvania, Specter found GOP opposition to the stimulus vote still so entrenched that it has “caused a scism that is irreconcilable” among party leaders.

That’s code for, “He couldn’t win a GOP primary if he was the only candidate on the ballot.“

Specter was looking down the barrel of a tough primary battle with Pat Toomey, who came very close to beating Specter the last time around. Toomey is polling well and raising plenty of cash, and conservative opposition to the stimulus—and Specter’s support for it—is only helping his case.

So Specter’s switch, then, is more utilitarian than philosophical; as a Democrat, he has access to party cash that he wouldn’t had he stayed with the GOP.

And then there’s this: Specter will now be assisted in his showdown with Toomey by a president whom he campaigned against and for whom he (presumably) did not vote just months ago.

How’s that for strange bedfellows?

Actually, it’s not all that strange. The lion’s share of things that happen in politics have nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with opportunism.

And in that way, Arlen Specter’s announcement this morning is actually rather ordinary.