PS MAY 2009 Pages.qxd
5/4/2009
5:40 PM
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PROGRAM SUCCESS – MAY 2009
100 - DAY
SILLINESS
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Guest Columnist
Then Democratic Presidential contender Barack
Obama did a prescient thing last October. He
told an interviewer
on a Colorado radio
station that he
thought the first
1000 days not the
first 100 days
would make the
crucial difference
for his presidency.
Candidate Obama
directly parodied
the line from JFK’s
inauguration
address in 1961.
K e n n e d y
proclaimed the first
1000 days as the
better time frame to
measure
how
effective
or
bumbling an administration is. Obama and JFK
were wise to cite the much longer time frame.
They sought to damp down the wild public
expectations that they can work quick magic
and miracles in no time flat.
Obama is well aware that the 100 days burden
weighs heavier on him than any other president
in modern times. He’s young, liberal, untested,
and black. There are still deep doubts,
suspicions and loud grumbles from some about
his competency and political savvy. The Mt.
Everest stack of op-eds, news articles,
pictorials, websites, chatrooms, national viewer
polls and surveys, and CNN and MSNBC
specials will dissect, peck apart his words and
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initiatives for the first 100 days, and nag everyone else to do the
same. That put even more pressure on to show he’s a tough,
resolute, effective leader.
Obama in his quip to the Colorado radio interviewer knew the
silliness of fixating on the drop in the bucket 100 day time span
to brand a president and his presidency as a stunning success or
a miserable flop. A quick look at the presidency of his two
immediate predecessors is enough to prove that. Clinton
bombed badly in pushing Congress for a $16 billion stimulus
package; he bungled the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding
gays in the military, and got the first flack on his health care
reform plan. Yet, the Clinton presidency is regarded as one of
the
most
successful,
popular
and
enduring
in
modern times.
Then there’s the
B u s h
presidency. He
got off to a fast
start. At the 100
day mark in
April 2001, his
approval ratings
m a t c h e d
Obama’s. He
was
widely
applauded for
his
trillion
dollar
tax
cutting program, his “Faith-Based” and disabled Americans
Initiatives, and for talking up education, health care reform and
slashing the national debt. But aside from the momentary
adulation he got after the 9/11 terror attack his presidency is
rated as one of the worst in modern times.
The 1000 day mark that Obama, Kennedy and other presidents
have cited as the more realistic time frame is not an arbitrary
number. That marks the near end of a president’s first White
House term. The honeymoon is over, and the president has
fought major battles over his policies, initiatives, executive
orders, court appointments and programs with Congress, the
courts, interest groups and the med