Grading the grades of Obama’s first 100 days

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: April 30, 2009

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.