WASHINGTON: Today marks the first 100 days in office for US President Barack Obama.
In just 100 days, the incoming president has banned torture, begun diplomatic talks with Iran, started to address climate change and confronted the economic crisis. He even got the first family a dog.
Obama has also set the tone and laid the groundwork for his presidency, which seems to be altering the public perception of race relations in the US. Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good and the percentage of blacks who say so has double since last July, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll released on Tuesday.
The poll found broad support for Obama’s approach on a variety of issues, including one the most contentious: Whether Congress should investigate the harsh interrogation tactics authorized by his predecessor. Sixty-two percent of Americans share Obama’s view that hearings are unnecessary.
In the midst of dealing of the 100-day presidency, there has emerged a hiccup of the widening swine flu outbreak where the president had to deflect speculation that he could have acquired the virus on his April 16 trip to Mexico City.
On that day Obama met with Felipe Solis, the 65-year-old head of the national museum in Mexico City. According to the Spanish-language obituaries in the Mexican press, Solis died on April 23 from pneumonia related to an ongoing health condition. Many in the media outside Mexico widely disseminated incorrect information that Solis died from the swine flu the day after his meeting with Obama. As recently as this week, conservative Fox News commentator Glenn Beck was continuing to broadcast this false claim.
The media rumor-mongering led White House press secretary Robert Gibbs to reiterate numerous times that the president’s health is fine. Soon after the Gibbs press briefing, the White House felt compelled to distribute a statement from the Mexican Embassy backing up its story.
Rumors of a flu-tainted president aside, Obama’s first 100 days have involved him fielding queries about the economy, his decision to allow federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and even his views on steroid use among major league baseball players.
Even before taking office, Obama also broke a record during the president transition period from his election Nov. 4 through Jan. 9, holding 15 news conferences and taking 62 questions.
That far surpassed what George Bush, Bill Clinton and former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did during their transitions.
Some reporters complain they are suffering from “Obama overdose,” but most reporters say they feel reassured by the amount of time Obama spends talking to the press, as the US is facing so many crises on so many fronts.
Time Magazine’s Joe Klein wrote this week that Obama’s debut has been the most impressive of any president since Franklin Roosevelt, who gave rise to the genre with his quick passage of New Deal legislation. Klein says this year’s assessments are justified because Obama, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, represents “a really major pendulum shift.”
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, author of a book on Roosevelt’s first 100 days, writes that Obama “has put more points on the board than any president” since, yes, FDR.
Both of these men are liberal columnists, but some conservative pundits have given the president a passing grade, while warning that the real challenges lie ahead. The Weekly Standards’ Fed Barnes and the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan have used the same phrase: “So far, so good.”
But not all reports are so rosy. The conservative Media Research Center said in a report that mainstream organizations are “in the tank” for Obama and are refusing to report that he is a “socialist.” And, of course, conservatives on the cable news network Fox have already all but declared the Obama presidency a failure of soclialism.
On the other hand, bloggers seem enamored with Obama’s style. At AOL’s new Politics Daily site, correspondent Carl Cannon writes: “He is as velvety smooth as a cold glass of Guinness, this new president of ours... not to mention the good looks of a Kennedy, the even keel of a Roosevelt, the understated swagger of an Eisenhower.”
At MSNBC.com, Howard Fineman says that Obama was “born” to live “calmly and confidently on a global stage with the hottest lights and biggest audience.... He doesn’t seem needy, aloof or afraid. We used to call that ‘cool.’”
The Washingtonian Magazine has even gone so far to use a Photoshop-altered hunky photo of the president in his swimming briefs on their cover page, with the headline: 20 Reasons to LOVE Living Here: Reason 2 — Our New Neighbor is Hot.”
Today evening, Obama will mark his 100th day by giving his third prime-time news conference as president, which has some grumbling among network executives who say that carrying such an event costs broadcast networks an estimated $10 million in lost advertising revenue.
But, with an economy in distress, two wars, and now a swine-flu outbreak, the pressure on networks to agree to Obmama’s request as a public service is enormous. Only Fox News has turned down the request, opting to show its drama “Lie to Me” instead.
