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.