‘So-far, so good’ for Obama

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama aced a choreographed first 100 hours in the White House, dramatically ending the Bush era by scything away at some high-profile domestic and national security policies.

‘I think so far, so good,’ said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.
‘He has made a clear break away from the previous administration.’
Yet Obama’s bold approach cannot disguise the depth of the challenges and yet unseen threats confronting the young president in a restive world beset by plunging economies and simmering insecurity.
Obama’s Democratic team seems to have sketched methodical plans to ensure the new president would come across as a man of action from day one.
With the stroke a pen, Obama ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay war on terror camp which has stained the US reputation abroad.
With a flourish, Obama banned CIA secret prisons abroad and the use of torture in terror interrogations.
He named two heavy hitting envoys, George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, for the Middle East, and Afghanistan and Pakistan, a sign of robust engagement rarely seen during the Bush administration.
On the premier crisis, the economy, Obama commissioned an in-depth daily briefing on the savage outlook in the United States and abroad.
He cajoled Congress to act fast on his 800-billion-dollar stimulus plan and lent an ear to Republicans who complained congressional Democrats had locked them out.
According to The New York Times, he plans to tighten the nation’s financial regulatory system, introducing stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers.
Friday, Obama wiped out a key Bush administration social policy, overturning a ban on US funds going to international family planning groups which have links to abortion.
So, a sheaf of campaign promises has been ticked off. But while simple to enact, few of Obama’s first steps carry a guarantee of success.
Obama may close Guantanamo but will soon face the choice of what to do with inmates deemed too dangerous to release but impossible to prosecute due to tainted evidence.
He may dispatch envoys to the geopolitical cauldrons in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan, but hopes for progress look slim.
And there is no guarantee that Obama’s massive stimulus package will quickly haul the US economy out of its deep malaise – there is already talk of a second plan and a massive extra bailout for the decimated banking industry.
The depth of the economic apocalypse bequeathed by the Bush administration is staggering.
Talismanic software giant Microsoft cut 5 000 jobs on Friday – the most sweeping losses in its history. Another US icon Harley-Davidson dropped another 1 100, as motorcycle sales slump.
US unemployment claims hit a 26-year high and home building fell to half-century lows, on Thursday.
Given such grim news, Obama has no choice politically but to articulate the depth of the crisis, but also knows that restoring tattered US confidence is vital, and that he may be the only source of hope in daunting times.
‘If we act as citizens and not partisans and begin again the work of remaking America, then I have faith that we will emerge from this trying time even stronger and more prosperous than we were before,’ he told Americans in his weekly radio and online address on Saturday.
So far, polls show that Americans, buoyed by the spectacle of their first black president, and his crusade for change are behind Obama. – Nampa-AFP