Obama out of the gate: bold, aggressive moves

President Obama’s first 100 days in office have been bold and aggressive as he has improved public opinion on the economy and launched a concerted effort to change the world’s perception of the United States.

But Obama’s fixes to help the country out of the recession will take years to gauge accurately, and the jury is still out as to whether his international efforts have made the U.S. safer.

Domestic policy

Obama’s term thus far has been dominated by his efforts to address and solve the economic crisis. However, despite the president’s campaign promises of bipartisanship, the tone in Washington is as partisan as ever.

{mosads}The $787 billion economic stimulus package, Obama’s most significant legislative accomplishment, was rejected by all House Republicans and all but three Senate GOPers. (Sen. Arlen Specter, who was one of the three Republicans, defected from the GOP on Tuesday.)

Obama’s legislative strategy on the stimulus and other bills — a broad outline allowing congressional Democrats to fill in the details — resulted in missteps that allowed Republicans to go on the offensive.

The GOP leadership pounced when provisions on sexually transmitted disease prevention were inserted in the stimulus, subsequently forcing Obama to persuade congressional leaders to drop that language.

Yet Obama triumphed in the end, signing the bill less than a month after being sworn into office.

Obama struggled in putting his Cabinet into place as tax issues plagued some of his higher-profile nominees, including Health and Human Services secretary nominee and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). Daschle eventually withdrew his nomination in what was one of the toughest days for the Obama White House.

At the 100-day mark, the White House continues to come under fire as key posts remain vacant.

Still, Obama has signed into law a slew of bills, including a long-stalled children’s healthcare measure and a high-profile pay measure. Congress is expected to approve of Obama’s budget this week.

One of the president’s greatest challenges began to unfold shortly before the 100-day marker as threats of a swine flu pandemic gripped the globe and the administration found itself grappling with its first major public health scare. How Obama and his team deal with the possible pandemic will likely be the first significant grade of the next 100 days.

{mospagebreak}Foreign policy

The president’s early moves on Iraq and Afghanistan were largely applauded by Republicans, though many on the left were quick to criticize his decision to amend his time line for withdrawal from Iraq to 19 months and to significantly increase troops going to Afghanistan.

Obama stoked controversy with his early announcement that he intends to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, his release of Bush-era memos pertaining to enhanced interrogation techniques and his apologetic tone as he has traveled the globe to restore America’s standing.

{mosads}The president adhered entirely to his campaign pledge to close the detention facility in Cuba, but he apparently learned upon taking office that finding a home for the enemy combatants would be more difficult than he had thought. Instead of closing the facility immediately, Obama ordered a departmental review that would guide him in closing Guantánamo within one year.

The uncertainty surrounding where the prisoners might end up — especially the possibility of housing them on U.S. soil — provided Republicans with enough talk-show fodder to cloud the decision.

That criticism was recently compounded by the president’s decision to declassify memos from the White House outlining the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney blasted the new president for making Americans less safe. Meanwhile, many Democrats were furious with Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for saying pre-emptively that the Department of Justice would not prosecute intelligence officials who employed the techniques.

The White House insists that closing Guantánamo and releasing the memos will ease tensions between the U.S. and the rest of the world, a mission Obama has made a priority as he has traveled to three different continents in his very short time in office.

The president won kudos from nearly all corners as he embarked on a trip to Europe and Turkey for the G-20 and NATO alliance meetings, but in the end, the president accomplished little other than establishing some good will with European leaders.

France offered to symbolically take one prisoner from Guantánamo Bay, and the rest of Europe offered very little in the way of military help in Afghanistan.

While Obama won rave reviews abroad, Republicans stood with him until Obama took his relationship-building tour to Central America.

After the president was seen repeatedly shaking hands with the vitriolic, anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the GOP began to characterize Obama’s travels as overly apologetic and evincing weakness.

Obama has ordered targeted military strikes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, signaling he will not back off in the fight against al Qaeda. Yet the Obama administration has not made any real progress on dealing with the nuclear-weapon ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

{mospagebreak}The next 100

Obama has moved at a furious pace in his first three months in office, and he shows few signs of slowing down.

Moving forward, the president and his staff concede that they are far from out of the woods on the global economic crisis, and the foreign policy outlook is filled with many hurdles.

{mosads}Republicans have shown no signs of letting up in their criticisms of Obama’s spending plans, and despite his promise to continue to reach out, political realities and what now appears to be a filibuster-proof Senate could serve only to harden the party lines that have been entrenched for so long.

Obama will likely continue to offer what Republicans have been calling lip service even as he pushes big-ticket items like healthcare reform, energy policy and education reform through a Democratically controlled Congress with a Republican Party in disarray.

A daunting challenge like reforming the nation’s healthcare system could seem like a walk in the park, however, as the president looks to follow through on his foreign policy agenda from the first 100 days.

The news out of Afghanistan and Pakistan continues to worsen, as the Taliban have pushed further into Pakistan and European leaders lack the will and political capital to assist with combat troops.

And with the clock ticking down on the president’s planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, violence there flared in the days leading up to the 100-day marker, further complicating Obama’s desire to switch gears to focus on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

Big picture

{mosads}Like any president, Obama has stumbled. But voters like him just as much as they did in November.

Obama’s approval ratings consistently top 60 percent, and as a result, he wields a lot of political capital.

Obama helped Democrats expand their congressional majority in 2008, and few Democrats on Capitol Hill are looking to distance themselves from the former junior senator from Illinois.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have been reluctant to go after Obama personally, knowing that Democrats and most independent voters approve of the president.