1 of 4 | U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to a crowd at Fox High School during a town hall meeting about his first 100 days in office in Arnold, Missouri on April 29, 2009. Obama spoke about the economy, defense and education before taking questions from the crowd. (UPI Photo/Bill Greenblatt) |
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WASHINGTON, April 29 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama celebrated his first 100 days in office Wednesday having already pushed through a transformational series of changes in domestic and foreign policy and still riding high in the polls.
The president also got a significant 100th-day present when Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced Tuesday he was jumping ship from the Republicans to the Democrats after 28 years in the Senate. His defection means that once Al Franken is confirmed as junior senator from Minnesota, the Democrats will have a crucial filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and can then push through any Supreme Court or administration appointments they like. It also means the once-mighty tribe of Northeastern Republican moderates in Congress is now reduced in the Senate to the two senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
Obama weathered his first national-security crisis well, culminating in the rescue of U.S. merchant ship Capt. Richard Phillips from the pirates holding him hostage in the Gulf of Aden. The president's trip across Europe attracted enthusiastic crowds and started the process of restoring America's international reputation, which had been tarnished by the interrogation techniques and network of secret prisons used by the previous Bush administration in its war on terror.
Obama is also trying to start a diplomatic dialogue with Iran and to revive -- so far with scant success -- the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The president has been open to criticisms for his failure to rein in congressional leaders on their explosion of pork-barrel spending under the guise of an economic stimulus package. As we have previously noted, only 11 percent of the $787 billion spending program can actually be classified as any kind of realistic stimulus spending to jump-start the U.S. economy.
The economy has been Obama's main area of failure so far, despite the overwhelmingly high popularity, poll approval ratings and still generally sympathetic mainstream press he has enjoyed. The U.S. economy has lost 650,000 jobs per month on average since he was elected on Nov. 4, 2008, and the rate of job loss is, if anything, increasing. Current projections put it as high as 7.5 million for the president's first year in office unless the trend can be reversed.
The looming bankruptcy of Chrysler and the continuing struggle over restructuring General Motors are gloomy omens. And if the incipient swine flu crisis spreads, that would put another massive damper on hopes for a quick economic recovery. However, on the plus side, the Dow Jones industrial average is now hovering back around 8,000, close to where it was when Obama took the oath of office. Significantly, RealClearPolitics pointed out that Obama's approval ratings have fallen and risen along with the fluctuations in the Dow.
Obama continues to enjoy very high personal approval ratings. The latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll gives him a healthy 62 percent overall approval rating with only 21 percent disapproving of his performance while 73 percent find him honest and trustworthy.
The latest New York Times/CBS poll gives Obama a whopping 68 percent approval rating after 100 days compared with only 56 percent for George W. Bush at this time. The latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll gave Obama a 63 percent approval rating including, significantly, 61 percent of independents.
An analysis by RealClearPolitics shows the president's approval rating in the Gallup Poll at 63 percent after 100 days in office and notes that this is still behind the approval figures after 100 days for John F. Kennedy, 83 percent; Lyndon Johnson, 79 percent; Dwight D. Eisenhower, 73 percent; Ronald Reagan, 67 percent; and Gerald Ford, 66 percent.
Obama tied in his 100th-day approval rating with Jimmy Carter, who also weighed in at 63 percent. But RealClearPolitics noted that the 100-day mark only says so much about a presidency, as Carter's popularity sank precipitously by the time he lost his re-election bid by a decisive margin to Reagan in 1980.
Still, one poll result the administration likes a lot is the sharp upswing since January in respondents saying the country is on the right track. That is no mean feat.
Obama remains confident and energetic. He has outlined a very ambitious agenda, and he has been good about weaving in crises with his plans, such as making healthcare reform and energy plans part of his blueprint for getting the U.S. economy on track. But his most recent suggestion to cut $100 million out of $3.4 trillion in spending is like bailing out the Atlantic Ocean with one bucket of water. And he has yet to get specific and credible about his much-touted alternative-energy plans.
It's still a long road ahead. But then again, one of Franklin Roosevelt's biggest initiatives in his first 100 days, the National Recovery Administration with its symbol of the Blue Eagle, proved to be an unworkable bureaucratic dinosaur before it was put out of its misery by the Supreme Court.
What counts for Obama, as for all the presidents before him, is not how he started, but how he will finish.
