James Forsyth James Forsyth

Grading Obama

As the 100 day landmark approaches, it is day 95 of the Obama presidency today, the punditocracy are coming up with their Obama verdicts. (You can read The Spectator’s 100 days special here). Obviously, rating a president this early is slightly absurd. At the 100 days mark, Jimmy Carter looked like he was going to be a successful president—and look how that turned out. While 100 days into the Bush administration no one was predicting what would turn out to be the defining issue of the presidency. But I think we can tell some important things about President Obama even at this early stage.

On domestic policy, Obama has shown himself to be both extremely liberal and extremely cautious. As my friend Reihan Salam writes today:

“There may well be good reasons for Obama’s itchy intervention finger, but there’s a real danger that we’ll be left with zombie banks, zombie industries, and a zombie economy that limps along, bleeding jobs and growth for years. Think of this as removing a Band-Aid really, really, really slowly.”

In terms of the politics, Obama has rather fallen between two stools. If he was going to try and do everything at once, as he has, he needed to present himself as a transformative figure rather than expectations managing in his inaugural address. He also needed to do a better job in managing House Democrats, whose antics and ideological posing gave Republicans the cover they needed not to support the stimulus. Indeed, Obama has singularly failed to bring bipartisanship to Washington.

Foreign policy is a mixed bag. I’m glad Obama has hewn a sensible line on Iraq. But the real test there will come if the troops need to stay longer than currently planned.

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