THRIVES AFTER 100 DAYS AMONG LIBERALS, BUT
Hailed as something on the order of a Roosevelt or Lincoln in just his first 100 days in office, President Obama remains the apple of the media's eye.
He's been crowned more ambitious than FDR and more historic than Abe Lincoln.
There's nary a note of any stumbles so far.
Even the White House seems a little uncomfortable with all the cooing and purring, and offered a little more balance.
"I'd give the administration a B-plus," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday. "I think there's always room for improvement."
The media's muse also dutifully gave his swooning poets a grade of their own.
"I'd give them a strong 'A,' " Gibbs told a CNN interviewer.
Certainly, the Obama administration can point to some strong successes, but there have also been failures.
Since taking the oath of office, Obama has signed six pieces of legislation crafted by his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill. Several of those laws were longtime Democratic initiatives, such as demanding equal pay for women and requiring the government to provide health insurance to poor children.
These are hugely popular among Democrats. But the expansion of government-funded health insurance at a time when federal entitlement programs are already teetering on the verge of collapse may well prove to have been foolhardy.
Other bills signed by Obama were his ambitious budget and his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. The successful passage of those massive spending plans is a reflection of the nearly universal power he and his party hold in Washington today.
But they also reveal one of Obama's biggest failures so far.
He won the election on promises to change the way Washington works, yet allowed Democratic lawmakers to lard up his spending plans with pork.
Obama has reached out to some of the world's worst governments in a laudable bid for peace. But it's as if Obama thinks history began 99 days ago, when he took office. It's almost as if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Fidel Castro haven't done plenty to deserve their ostracized place.
His greatest mistake, by far, was releasing the graphic memos detailing the government's harsh interrogation techniques without including a memo from his own administration arguing that the techniques had been productive.
Another sterling success for Obama has been his ability to keep the media in full swoon and maintain the image of a squeaky-clean statesman.
It's just this talent that coats a politician with a sheen of Teflon that protects him much later when the political winds turn harsh and severely damage his party -- as they surely will.
Charles Hurt New York Post 4/28/09
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