On Jan. 20, U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta replaced an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that of newly sworn-in President Obama in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Station, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama this week marked 100 days as president.
During his first 100 days as president, Barack Obama benefited from his enemies, his challenges, and who he wasn’t as much as who he was.
Going forward, the terrain might not be quite so favorable, and the measures will be harsher.
On Tuesday, Day 99, Obama got yet another gift from his political opponents. He learned that longtime Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania moderate, had become a Democrat, the latest example of the Republican Party’s struggle to stay relevant to middle-of-the-road Americans.
In Congress, Republicans have been, for the most part, cohesive. With the exception of Specter and two Republican moderates from Maine, they stood unanimously against Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus spending.
But the GOP is short on recognizable new leaders and has seen its coalition shrink and harden since Obama’s election.
Obama’s political enemies have been a blessing. Rush Limbaugh wished that his policies would fail right out of the gate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry talked secession. Only about 1 in 5 who responded to the most recent ABC-Washington Post poll identified themselves as Republicans.
But then came Wednesday, Day 100. There was news of the first U.S. death from the swine flu. And the government announced the economy contracted worse than expected in the first quarter of 2009, at a startling annualized rate of 6.1 percent.
Both stories highlighted the challenges Obama will increasingly own as George W. Bush gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
Bush left as an unpopular president with an economy in crisis and two wars to wage. Obama has benefited by not being Bush. That comparative advantage will fade for Obama just as it did for Ronald Reagan late in 1981, when a worsening economy made people forget Jimmy Carter.
If the economy does not pick up and start moving out of recession toward the latter half of this year, blame will start falling heavily on Obama, just as it did on Reagan.
But if recovery becomes the new “r” word by then, Obama could very well solidify the Democrats’ hold on government for the next eight years, at least.
“The bottom line is, if things are better . . . we’ll think he’s a genius,” said Sue Aldridge, a 69-year-old pest company owner in suburban St. Louis. “If not, we’ll see.”
She voted for Obama and says she thinks he’s doing a pretty good job, “although the spending concerns me a little bit.”
This is the fundamental danger for Obama. His personal favorability (73 percent in a mid-April Pew Research Center poll) and job approval (63 percent, according to Pew) are robust.
But Americans also are expressing doubts about some of Obama’s policies, especially the level of government spending and deficits he is proposing. Pew said only 50 percent approved of what he has done on taxes and the deficit.
At some point, Obama’s job and personal approval ratings will intersect with the public’s verdict on his policies. Where that intersection occurs will determine the sustainability and success of his presidency.
Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut draws a parallel with Reagan.
The Gipper came to the 100 day-mark of his presidency with 67 percent job approval, according to the Gallup Poll. He had survived an assassination attempt, and Americans who doubted his policies nonetheless liked him as president.
But unemployment spiked in the fall of 1981, adding to the misery of high interest rates and inflation. By year’s end, Reagan’s job approval fell to 41 percent and stayed around that level through 1982, when the GOP got slaughtered in mid-term congressional elections.
Kohut, then with Gallup, said that people who had been willing to give Reagan the benefit of the doubt on policy because they liked him personally abandoned him when new economic shocks forced a re-examination of Reagan’s policies.
Obama doesn’t exactly face the same situation, Kohut said, “because people have faith in him and are so concerned about the economy that he has a fair amount of cover for things that make people uncomfortable” about his policies.
“Hope,” Kohut said, is “a very important thing that Obama has got going for him.”
Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com.
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