http://www.observer.com/2010/politics/no-obama-obits-pleaseNo Obama Obits, Please
By Joe Conason
January 19, 2010 | 1:36 p.m
Having taken the oath of office just one year ago, Barack Obama is a flashing meteor that sputtered out too soon—or so the national media narrative tells us. According to this story line, the young president is a presumptuous liberal who disappointed his own idealistic followers while irritating everyone else. At ABC News, the leading tipsters at The Note already speak of a “final judgment,” so we may soon hear declarations of a “failed presidency” from Washington’s pundit herd.
After a run of extraordinary luck that helped get him into the White House, Mr. Obama is indeed confronting his share of trouble. He may well encounter more and worse as the midterm election approaches. But he and his critics should remember the last time a Democratic president had to listen to the drafting of his own political obituary.
Those premature farewells came early in Bill Clinton’s first term.
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If scored by his legislative attainments, Mr. Obama is a highly effective president. In fact, the scrupulously nonpartisan Congressional Quarterly rated him the most effective president of the past five decades, as measured by Congressional votes on which he took a position, either yea or nay. When he enunciated a clear position in the House and Senate, his success rate was 96.7 percent—a number that surpassed the previous records held by Lyndon Baines Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower.
If scored by his campaign promises, Mr. Obama also wins high marks.
That judgment also comes from a respected nonpartisan source, the Pulitzer Prize–winning political Web site known as Politifact.com.
Tracking in detail the progress of 500 policy pledges made during the 2008 campaign, Politifact has assembled an “Obameter” that rates each promise as kept, broken, compromised or “in the works.” Their finding is that he has made good on 91 promises so far and broken only 14; 275 are in the works, meaning that he is seeking to fulfill them, and 87 are stalled, which indicates little progress. For a president who has yet to complete his first year, those are not only decent ratings but a strong indication of good faith.Still, Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen sharply, and his party seems headed for a midterm spanking. Those declines are partly cyclical and normal, and partly the fallout from economic and military conditions that he inherited after nearly a decade of Republican misrule. But they are also owed in part to his administration’s mistakes, in pursuing a stimulus program that was too small and scattered, and a health care reform that is too compromised and timid.
But for now he also suffers the lagging effect of his legislative successes (including health care, if it finally passes), which voters will not feel until many months from now.
The Clinton experience tells us that it is far too soon to dismiss the Obama presidency—and that the loud stampede of the journalistic herd is almost always misleading.
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