President Obama ~The Next 100 Days
After his first 100 days, President Obama pushes on with a tremendous agenda ahead of him: Focusing more attention to foreign and domestic issues while dealing with the G.O.P who has been on the opposite side of nearly all his major economic initiatives. The next 100 days will be a vital test of the influence of President Obama in getting high priority legislation — like economic recovery, health care, energy and immigration — passed through.
The latest polls show that the American people have given President Obama a job approval rating in the mid-60s, which is higher than Bill Clinton’s approval rating in his first 100 days.
But a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. Poll out Monday suggests that President Obama is personally more popular than his policies. The poll showed that three in four Americans feel President Obama has the personal qualities a president should have. But when the respondents were asked if they agree with President Obama on the issues, that number drops to 57 percent. Read more on the poll. For the G.O.P, the support is less than flattering: less than 30 percent say they feel President Obama is doing a fair job.
And with the Republican Party opposing most of the major initiative of President Obama in the first 100 days — especially the economic stimulus and FY 2010 budget plan — it will be getting the parties to work across the isles will be a task for President Obama. Can he bring the parties together on major issues?
At his press conference on Wednesday night, President Obama once again seemed to extend the offer of bipartisanship to the Republican Party.
“To my Republican friends, I want them to realize that me reaching out to them has been genuine,” President Obama said at a prime time news conference capping his 100th day in office. “I can’t sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change.”
While the G.O.P may be analyzing the scenario before them: Democratic control of the Executive and Legislative branches. Getting Republican legislation passed without bipartisan support will be next to impossible. Just this week, veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced that he was leaving the GOP and joining the Democratic Party. It was a seismic shift in Washington and could have a tremendous impact on the influence of President Obama. With Specter’s switch and Democrat Al Franken’s likely victory in the Minnesota Senate race, Democrats are poised to have a 60-seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
In other words, Democrats will create the agenda.
But President Obama is cautious and won’t leave anything to chance, saying he’s under no false pretences that he’ll have a “rubber-stamp Senate” now that Specter has switched parties.
Whatever the case, the GOP leadership is looking ahead — and signs of bipartisanship may beginning to slowly show.
“Obviously, the country’s got terrific challenges before it. … I think bipartisanship can work. If there is a commitment on both sides, obviously, to try and work towards solutions in these very difficult issue areas,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor told CNN Wednesday. “But look, there’s no question. We need to both be open to try to work together.”
But not so fast, says one Republican Party aide. Sen. John McCain’s spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said Thursday that the Arizona Repubican believes President Obama and Democrats don’t really want to compromise on big, controversial issues. “Reaching out and bringing ideas to the table with a real interest in compromise are two different things,” Buchanan said. The next 100 days will also be a critical test for G.O.P members who’d like to improve their brand. The latest Washington Post/ABC Poll showed only 21 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republican, which is down 4 percent from 25 percent in a late March poll.
The poll, on the other hand, showed that 35 percent identified themselves as Democrats; and 38 percent called themselves independents. Besides the major task of handling the country’s recession, two major domestic policy issues are sure to come up, the popularity of President Obama and outreach to Congress will be critical. Health care reform, for one, was one of the early 2008 campaign pledges of President Obama — and is sure to come up. And it could likely pass this year because of a special legislative process, known as budget reconciliation, which won’t allow Republicans to filibuster the legislation. Democrats, who control 59 seats in the Senate, will be able to pass it with a simple majority vote instead of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.
Another issue near and dear to President Obama is energy. Can President Obama put forth an energy plan that both parties can agree on?
President Obama has signaled in his first 100 days that finding alternative energy sources — such as wind, hydropower, solar — will be vital in ending the country’s dependence on foreign oil. For President Obama, it’s not just an energy dependence issue, but one of national security. On the foreign policy front, President Obama will continue to pursue his strategy for combating increasing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq — and Taliban encroachments in Pakistan.
While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inherited from the Bush administration, his strategy going forward — adding additional troops to Afghanistan and a withdrawal timeline in Iraq — will prove critical to his legacy. CNN political analyst David Gergen, who has a long history working for both Democratic and Republican presidents, says what has impressed him about President Obama is his strategic vision for the war-torn area.
“On Afghanistan, they really did sit down and try to do their homework, and try to figure out how is this going to work out over time,” he said.
Gergen says the next 100 days of President Obama will show that he is a “pragmatic liberal” — legislating from left-of-center. But CNN’s Fareed Zakaria disagrees, pointing out that the foreign policy of President Obama is one Republican hawks “would be very comfortable with.”
“I think right now the truth of the matter is, he’s put forward a kind of beautiful overture, by which I mean he’s reached out to Iran; he’s reached out to Syria; he’s put forward stuff for the Middle East peace process,” Zakaria said.
But it’s also relations with historically Anti-American countries like Cuba and Venezuela that will put to the test Obama’s campaign promise to open up a dialogue — much to the chagrin of Republicans. President Obama has signaled he wants to work with both countries, and has already eased restrictions on travel to Cuba.
Will a lifting of the nearly 50-year trade embargo with the Caribbean nation be next? The president’s next 100 days will, for all intents and purposes, will likely be another “Historic and Hallmark” style benchmark. But a lot can happen in the next 100 days — and President Obama’s leadership on major issues will be placed under the microscope — issues that could set the tone for America’s global relations for many years to come.
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