Obama100Days

I want to be amongst the first to write briefly about the first 100 days of President Obama. To achieve this I shall cunningly write this article before he hits the magic number on April 29 in the meantime I have to travel the north of the UK on academic business.

During the Democrat primaries it became obvious that candidate Obama was a great orator, an excellent communicator and a leader who can and does inspire. Furthermore, and a little less evident was the fact that he is a terrific political strategist, but not so wonderful as a tactician.

We then saw these attributes become clearer in the race for the White House. Obama would wait while others raced to take a political position and Obama would assume the Noel Coward stance of masterly inactivity. Then Barak claimed the middle ground making everyone else look hasty and far out on the loony edges of political suicide.

Now we are just a few days from the American government declaring its findings on the financial robustness of the country’s banks. This is going to show progress but not totally assured solvency for all these former colossal and sound institutions.

The President now needs to act with his economic team to clear up the toxic debts. He is still to do so, and he has been slow, some say too slow, but now he must sort this out. Until he does so there can be no lasting solutions to the American and world economic crisis. This is perhaps the biggest test facing the President.

President Obama ritual grade for his first 100 days in office will be compared to FDR and his first 100 days, perhaps to a lesser extent JFK's. But it is not a fair comparison. FDR faced the worst economic crisis in American history. JFK faced the Russians over Cuba but relatively few domestic problems. President Obama falls between the two.

Perversely Obama is looking much more like President George W Bush, his immediate predecessor. There are strange but clear similarities in the way both men handled their first 100 days.

The Bush legacy is considered truly dreadful, but it didn’t look that way when he began his tenure. Like all recent American Presidents he got the same first 100 days pass from voters that Obama received. In April 2001 Bush’s popularity poll numbers topped sixty percent, which matches those for Obama in April. A Washington Post/ABC Poll of the time even gave Bush high marks on his handling of the economy.

Bush, like most new presidents during the first heady hundred days used the customary early public goodwill to make politically favorable appointments, sign executive orders and shove through Congress programs that later would never get through, whilst making certain he had almost total executive power. Even at the start he was concerned to cement his historic legacy. Obama has followed more or less an identical approach.

Bush introduced his $1.6 trillion tax-cutting program to Congress, whist launching the "Faith-Based" Initiative to help local charitable groups, and his "New Freedom" Initiative to help disabled Americans. In his first address to Congress, he, copying Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK, cast himself as the education president, talked about health care reform. He even made vague promises to tackle paying off the national debt. Obama has followed pretty much the same script.

Bush and Obama worked hard in their first 100 days to look good overseas and this usually becomes the refuge of the Presidential last 100 days.

Bush took stabs at bipartisanship but later reneged on all of them. But that hasn’t stopped Obama make these same type of initiatives his priorities also.

Bush's most controversial early cabinet appointment was the Bible quoting, fundamentalist John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Obama picked Eric Holder as Attorney General, which stirred similar controversy over his partisanship and ideology.

Bush totally supported the construction of a national missile defense system in Europe. So to has Obama, albeit to a lesser extent. He called a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland the most cost-effective and proven defense system. He tied his decision to go ahead with it directly to Iran's nuclear threat and international security concerns. Critics hotly disputed the need for the system when Bush backed it. They will continue to dispute its need.

America and Bush had a love affair that didn’t last very long. The same was true for FDR, JFK and every other president. But I think President Obama will do better after his first 100 days than many predecessors because he has been faced with such a terrible starting point for America that anything he does will feel good compared to Bush.