A hundred days is not enough time to assess the likely prospects of a second baseman, or a running back, but that has prevented no one from large verdicts on Obama. Some of this is understandable. In these last few months the President seems not to have slept. At different times he has played the roles of CEO, statesman, commander in chief, mortgage adviser and market analyst. In the face of a swine flu pandemic he may even be forced to play doctor.
Emphasizing his dissimilarity to what went before, Obama has shown that he can walk and chew gum at the same time. He has stayed calm and articulate during a financial crisis which reduced Bush and McCain to incoherent mumbling; he has travelled wisely and spoken with grace and energy, and he has set about dismantling the legacies of the global war on terror with characteristic haste and tact, undaunted by the political circus around him. With a mammoth stimulus package already under his belt and the prospect of a filibuster-proof Senate majority, ready to pass significant education and health care proposals, Obama looks poised to get more transformative legislation through in his first year than Clinton managed in eight.
In the measured optimism of these retrospectives, it is easy to overlook the opposition Obama has faced in the early months. As the Republican Party continues its political free fall, it runs the risk of decaying into a hysterical fringe of its former self. Unmoored from a recognizable leader, the GOP has doubled down on the petulant, fact-free whining made popular by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. It has accused the new President with desperate zeal, of any number of conspiracy theories.
Repeatedly, the language of the political right has harked back to the easier clarities of America’s culture wars. Its pundits have talked, unblushingly, of the President’s willingness to “blame America first,” of his plans to adopt a radical socialist agenda and even of his administration’s incipient “fascism.” Admittedly, most of the wilder claims have been issued by the usual suspects on Fox News, but that makes them no less dangerous. Any country with such a dysfunctional opposition runs huge political risks. The failures of the Bush years will not be offset by the unchecked power of the Democrats, but unless the adults in the GOP regain control soon, they will bear the blame for letting their party become a gathering of directionless malcontents who are an opposition party in name only.
Four years from now it will be clear whether the stimulus was enough, whether withdrawal from Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan were wise, and whether unprecedented gambles on government spending and the deficit were worth taking. If Obama secures a second term and delivers just half of the changes that he appears to be considering, then he will have been an enormous success. Until then it is simply not possible to say whether Obama’s early moves in this multi-dimensional chess game have been the right ones.
The new President has often been mocked as a mere rhetorician or celebrity, but his quiet seriousness has already begun to change the tone of life in Washington. He has brought back the politics of an earlier time in which hard choices were not sold as easy ones. He has shown a respectful modesty in the face of crises instead of the dumb, strutting confidence which Bush assumed when daunted by his choices. Up to now, the age of Obama has been a return to an age of long-form, deliberative politics, even though much of it seems to have passed in a blur of quick decisions. This President does not pretend that he knows the right answers, or indeed that there are always correct answers to be found. The contrast with the doctrinaire conservatism and good and evil simplifications of his predecessor could not be greater. In fact Obama’s greatest achievement so far is the easy way in which he has restored dignity to the White House and shown that a cerebral and morally serious politician can still become president, providing he is suitably disguised with the looks and charm which a celebrity-obsessed culture demands. What remains to be seen is whether Obama can maintain this early form and stay focused on his extraordinarily ambitious agenda while the disenchanted Republicans poison the political atmosphere around him.
