"The First One Hundred Days: Grading The POTUS!"

It's time to Break It Down!

Undoubtedly, one can confidently say, never in the annals of recorded history has it taken so long to chronicle the events of any single 100-day span. Various media outlets and a cacophony of journalists were sighing and signifying about the impending First One Hundred Days of the Obama Administration long before he took office. In fact, at least one fatalistic antagonist has an article attributed to the matter and dated a full year before today. It is likely creative editing was used to re-title the work, but this just further underscores the point; it is impossible to consider the mass focus on the issue anything less than fixation; borderline hysteria.

The networks will address it, the cable channels will debate it, newspaper reporters will investigate it, and blogs and other on-line devices will bandy it about in pithy prose. The President of the United States (POTUS familiarly), has long held a unique position among world leaders. A position considered by many to be the most powerful on the planet, the 44th man elected and inaugurated as America’s President, Barack Hussein Obama has had a whirlwind, trial-by-fire indoctrination to his post.

By accounts far and wide, he entered office facing more troubles, tribulations, and woes than any President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who picked up the reins of power during the Great Depression. The central theme in a long list of challenges is a moribund economy, torpedoed by a recession, banking, housing, automobile industry crises, and record levels of unemployment. But not to be easily overshadowed, this sad collection of affairs is followed closely by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear threats in Middle and Far Eastern satellites, hemorrhaging drugs pouring across the border from Mexico, a broken healthcare system, and defining and defending a position on the environment.

As if those were not enough, and there are certainly more, President Obama and his party must learn to accommodate each other in such a way as to make their numerical majority in both houses of Congress a meaningful statistic. All the President's Men…and Women have yet to fashion a strategy to complete the team. One Hundred Days in, the President appears on track to have bested the pace set by his three most recent predecessors, but he is still far from finished. By March 31st, the Senate had confirmed 38 top-level officials. To put the remaining task in context, the President names approximately 500 positions requiring Senate confirmation, and roughly 3,000 all together. If there is one overarching lesson in all this, it may be, no matter how impressive winning the election was, organizing a cabinet and staff, and governing will be even more difficult.

Alas, maybe, just maybe on the eve of President Obama’s One Hundredth Day in office, his domestic inter-party challenge eased a bit. Yesterday, in a significant development, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican from Pennsylvania, saying, “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” according to David Espo, the Associated Press, announced his plans to switch to the Democratic party. According to a number of blogs, including the CNN PoliticalTicker, Right-wing Republican stalwart Rush Limbaugh greeted the news by urging Senator Specter to take Senator McCain and his daughter Meghan with him. Reportedly, Mr. Limbaugh characterized it as good, because it was weeding out people who are not really Republicans.

It remains to be seen how this action translates on the Senate floor. Senator Specter noted he would not automatically line up in support of President Obama’s initiatives. However, it is worth noting, this will boost the Democratic caucus to 59 members. If as anticipated, Al Franken prevails in his court case to win the Minnesota Senate seat, the Democrats have the potential to achieve the elusive filibuster-proof voting bloc. Given the often contentious nature of the debate between Republicans and Democrats, this late-breaking change may be one of the most important outcomes of President Obama’s First One Hundred Days.

Given the incredible weight of the challenges faced by President Obama, I think he has earned a solid B for his performance during this pressure-packed, highly scrutinized One Hundred Days. It will be interesting to observe how he, and “We the People” respond to his first 365 days, or his first 1,461 (4 years), or 2,922 (8 years), if it should come to that.

His stumbles have been few, but important. He started with an amped-up vetting process that while upgraded from previous forms, still allowed a number of tax-related gaffes and oversights to taint the Cabinet selection process. Alternately, if insufficient attention to tax-related details allowed some soon to be outliers to slip through the screening process, the enhanced nature of the process, which undoubtedly expanded after several Snafu’s, was too robust for some, who ultimately declined rather than submit to the level of transparency and revelation required by Team Obama.

But those are my thoughts and observations. It is up to each of us, using our own individual criteria to assess “The First One Hundred Days, and to Grade the POTUS!” How do you rate the President’s performance?

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/. A new post is published each Wednesday.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21522.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/obamas_first_100_days.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124095605121565495.html

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/20/news/economy/obama_first100days/index.htm

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/first.100.days/index.html

http://blogs.wsj.com/obama-100-days/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/01/21/GA2009012102666.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE53R4YP20090428

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/28/limbaugh-to-specter-please-take-mccain-with-you/

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0409/Fox_tops_CNN_and_MSNBC_combined.html?showall

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04252009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/100_days__100_mistakes_166177.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/28/AR2009042801667.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/11/politics/main4936968.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4936968

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/437/gallery/692788.html

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/408/story/691245.html