"The Hundred Days"

“The Hundred Days” refers to the period between Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape from exile in Elba, through his triumphant return to France, to his ultimate defeat at Waterloo in 1815. President Franklin Roosevelt, who came into office amidst the Great Depression, set a standard for the quantity of accomplishments for his first hundred days in office that is unlikely to be matched by any successor.

Although presidents sometimes draw attention to their accomplishments in their first hundred days, and the media and other politicians do, too, the milestone is arbitrary and overrated. A better barometer for presidential accomplishment is after the conclusion of the congressional session, at least before it breaks for summer recess, but commentators customarily rate a new president’s performance at the one hundred-day mark. They tend to focus on the quantity instead on the quality of the accomplishments, which reflects the Roosevelt standard.

Barak Obama’s will have been in office for one hundred days April 29, but now is an opportune time to assess his performance because Congress has approved his budget. Of course, a budget is just a guideline, so I shall reserve a fuller assessment until after Congress passes the appropriation bills based upon it. I only analyze Obama’s accomplishments, not his proposals.

Obama’s policies reflect a general continuation of the War on Terrorism, which is not a surprise, given that most of his George W. Bush's policies had received bipartisan support, but is a relief, considering that Obama had criticized Bush so heavily as to be the anti-Bush candidate. Specifically, Obama has not withdrawn precipitously from Iraq, and is carrying out the troop surge and counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan begun by his predecessor that is modeled on the success achieved in Iraq. Indeed, the Obama Administration has been aggressive in firing missiles from drones – a Bush Administration initiative -- against terrorists in Pakistan. Moreover, Obama has kept most of Bush's wartime intelligence and defense structure in place, including even some of the controversial parts (e.g. detaining terrorists, the PATRIOT Act and warantless wiretapping).

However, Obama has suspended military tribunals, in favor of trying terrorists in civilian courts, which would be much more difficult for prosecutors who must decide whether it is worth the revealing the secrets of sources and methods of intelligence in order to win convictions in civilian courts, where the rules of procedure are more favorable to defendants than in military courts. Another disconcerting retreat from Bush’s War on Terrorism is that Obama has announced the weakening of interrogations of terrorists and even announced that the Army Field Manuel will serve as the guide for interrogations, which allows the enemy to know precisely what methods interrogators will use, and thus how to resist them. These changes, as well as Obama’s conciliatory tone toward terrorists like Iran and Hamas, sends a signal of weakness to both our enemies and our friends.

It is too early to render much more of a judgment about Obama’s foreign policy, except that he tends to blame Bush and the United States for the world’s problems, and shows respect to our enemies and disrespects our friends, like typical a liberal. One foreign policy mistake so far is his trade policy that sparked retaliatory sanctions by Mexico.

Obama ordered U.S. foreign aid funds to be made available for groups that provide or promote abortion. He also made funding available for the destruction of human embryos and dismissively insulted anyone concerned about ethics in science as “ideological,” while promoting his own ideology.

The new president has gone on an unprecedented and unnecessary spending spree, as noted in earlier posts, which will necessitate more borrowing and, in turn, higher taxes in order to pay the interest on the massive debt. Additionally, he has abandoned welfare reform. Obama’s requirement of paying the prevailing (union) wage in government contracts will further add to the spending, and also strengthens Big Labor, which supports Obama and most Congressional Democrats. Radical political groups like ACORN will also benefit from his largesse. Obama’s tax cuts for the lower classes will probably be economically beneficial to some degree, but they will be offset by dramatically higher cigarette taxes and higher taxes on small businesses. His tax increases on the upper classes will slow economic growth overall. Meanwhile, Obama’s proposals to solve the financial crisis and for mortgage relief have increased uncertainty in the market, which discourages investment.

Obama’s expansion of government, centralization of control and redistributionism not only further erodes states’ rights, but threatens the liberty of the American people.

In short, Obama is mostly following the right policies in the War on Terrorism, despite some of his troubling rhetoric, but is governing as a radical uninterested in bipartisanship -- even for political cover -- in domestic affairs.