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Day 35 Report: Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?

Posted by Nick Stone 100 Days, obama 8:31 AM

It's day 35 of the president's administration. In As I do my daily news roundup, a few things catch my attention. In just under two years, the midterms will be upon us. We will head to the polls again and ask ourselves, "Are we better off than we were (2) years ago? Is it easier to buy milk and bread? To pay our mortgages? To send our children to college?

And so, let's see where we are on day 35 of our post-partisan, post-racial, and generally better-direction for our nation that we were promised. Afterward, if you still think that I'm just being a namby-pamby contrarian, then... I guess you aren't paying attention. At what point do we get to issue The Drawnlines Blog: I Told You So Edition?

CNN: Bipartisanship Didn't Last Long in Obama Era
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/22/obama.so.far/index.html

During the most contentious stretch of the Democratic presidential primary campaign last winter, then-candidate Hillary Clinton mocked Barack Obama for his pledge to transcend Washington's entrenched partisanship.
President Obama, who won the presidency on a bipartisan platform, now faces a very divided Washington.

"The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!" Clinton bellowed.
Obama dismissed Clinton's sarcasm as overly cynical and further evidence she was a creature of Washington. But as President Obama prepares to make his first major address to the nation, Clinton's comments are borne out.
For a candidate who won the White House on a mantle of bringing the country's two political parties together, Washington could not be more divided on Obama's initial weeks in the Oval Office and the policies he has put in place.

Poll: Most favor bipartisanship; Democrats, not so much
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/20/bipartisanship.poll/index.html

The survey's release comes one month after Obama's inauguration as president.
Two out of three people questioned in the poll approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president. And more than seven in 10 think that he is a strong leader who inspired confidence and is tough enough for the job.
"But the public appears more attracted to Obama's personal characteristics than his stand on the issues, and they don't think he can end partisan gridlock in Washington, one of the key messages of Obama's presidential campaign," Holland said.
Opinion about the president, while still fairly high, has dropped a bit since December on some measures, including six to seven point losses on inspiring confidence and the president's ability to bring change.

Guantanamo meets Geneva Convention standards, study finds
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo21-2009feb21,0,2083521.story

When you're trying like hell to close down a detention facility on the grounds that it is being used for immoral means to an end - and especially when this is a major campaign theme - you certainly don't want your own Pentagon's internal studies to show that your concerns are off base. You don't want a major newspaper spreading the word that we're basically running a terror bed-and-breakfast in a tropical island setting. OOPS! Who forgot to tell the LA Times? Guess their guy is getting kicked off AirForce One for promoting unflattering news.

Dark, Dark, Dark - by Maureen Dowd
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22dowd.html?ref=opinion

Let's be clear. If you're a liberal, and Maureen Dowd of all people isn't thrilled about your leadership while she sings your praises, you've screwed up big. If you can't muster up some praise from Dowd and the Daily Kos groupies, clearly your wagon has lost a wheel. Yet, this morning, Maureen hits it right on the nose (oddly enough):

...Obama is oozing empathy compared with his attorney general, who last week called us “a nation of cowards” about race.
Eric Holder, who showed precious little bravery in standing up to Clinton on a pardon for the scoundrel Marc Rich, is wrong. We have just inaugurated a black president who installed a black attorney general.
We need leaders to help us through our crises, not provide us with crude evaluations of our character. And we don’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, anymore than from conservative virtuecrats.
In the middle of all the Heimlich maneuvers required now — for the economy, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, health care, the environment and education — we don’t need a Jackson/Sharpton-style lecture on race. Barack Obama’s election was supposed to get us past that.

And to round out our news day and really close the deal on the bang-up job our new leadership is doing, how about this little nugget from New Hampshire. You know, the state with the nation's first primary? Yeah, that New Hampshire:

Obama's Markets: Please Be Quiet
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Obama%27s+markets%3a+Please+be+quiet&articleId=9ca1d5f8-b299-413c-a929-d6cfc79bd697

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal's top headline read: "Housing Bailout at $275 Billion."
The next morning, the Journal's top headline, in larger type, read: "Market Hits New Crisis Low." The day Obama's housing rescue plan became public, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 89 points.
That was after a 5.1 percent drop in the four days following Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's announcement of the Obama administration's new plan to shore up credit markets.
The more economic rescue plans Obama puts out, the further the market drops. The administration's ad hoc, "do something" approach, carried over from the end of the Bush administration, is hurting, not helping.