Here's your chance to turn a critical eye on all those breathless stories in the next few days about Obama's first hundred days.
First, so you can follow along, here's a chronology of 43's start, courtesy of Jim Lehrer's NewsHour.
Below, some pundit highlights, from the Wayback machine, dateline April-May, 2001.
First up: Andy Kohut.
He is doing very well with the public. There were a lot of polls this week. If you put them all together, the average is about 60 percent saying they approve of him -- and that's pretty good in absolute terms. If you look at our poll, we have a monitor there, 56 percent say they approve of George Bush's job performance so far...
Not shown in that is a very important element in response to him and that is the approval is extremely enthusiastic because Republicans love him. Seventy-one percent of the Republicans that we polled said they approved of him very strongly. That compares to 39 percent of Democrats saying that about President Clinton eight years ago. He's got his support of his base to the hilt.
The bottom line: Hundred days polls tell you next to nothing about a President.
In the same interview, Mark Shields:
[H]e has not yet been compared to Clinton on the grounds where I think he suffers most and I think even his admirers do, and that's competence, that's a sense of command, it's a sense of information, it's a mastery of the job.
His folks are doing a very wonderful job of kind of spinning that. That no, no he's not "Washington." He's not bureaucratese -- he doesn't talk that way...Well, you know, this is a guy, a different guy, talking direct and all the rest of it. And I think that at some point could become a serious problem for him.
It's safe to say we won't hear that about Obama next week!
Back to polls, this time right/wrong track: here's Susan Pinkus, reporting in the LA Times on Bush's poll numbers at the end of April, 2001:
Forty-four percent are saying that the country is moving in the right direction, but 43% say the country is seriously off on the wrong track. Optimism about the country's direction has dwindled since the question was asked in a Times poll taken last month. About half said the country was going in the right direction and 40% thought it was off on the wrong track. The respondents living in the western region of the country were more satisfied with the country's direction than those living elsewhere in the nation. Southerners, however, are feeling very pessimistic about the country. Californians were slightly optimistic 46%-40%.
Here's a hundred day take Karl Rove should have taken note of, from the
National Council of La Raza:
...[N]o objective analysis can frame the budget, tax plan, and appointments process as anything other than terrible disappointments to our community. Given the recently released results of the 2000 Census, and the substantial goodwill among Hispanics that the President engendered throughout his campaign, the Administration's neglect of the Latino community is simply inexplicable," concluded [Raul] Yzaguirre.
Can you tolerate an opinion from Newt Gingrich? Sure you can:
As analysts dissect President Bush’s first hundred days, the most important thing to remember is that he and his administration are different from what Washington has become used to. Because Bush works in a disciplined way to implement a broad strategy, he has been able to set the stage calmly and methodically for a potentially far-reaching performance.
Not insignificantly, the biggest changes in Washington have been cultural rather than political: The atmosphere is more businesslike, and dialogue across party lines is calmer. President Bush has already been able to change the tone dramatically, even after the thirty-five-day, often toxic fight over the election. He has been friendly, flexible, open, and very conservative—though no reporter seems to be capable of typing those four adjectives in one sentence. Bush is willing to delegate important initiatives and decisions and give credit to others.
Bookmark that link, so you can compare it to Newtie's diatribe next week.
At the same link, here's John O'Sullivan with, in retrospect, a prescient point (Note -- I've eliminated a history lesson, but the point is still salient):
The... issue is whether Bush will entrench America’s position as the leading world power or preside over the development of a multipolar world in which the United States is, at best, first among equals—and some hostile equals at that... What the United States must do is ensure that it remains the unquestioned leader of a Western alliance that can outpunch any other potential alliance of great powers. That in turn means that America must discourage and, if necessary, prevent the emergence of a single European superpower with a military capacity that matches its economic power. Among the many policies to achieve this—bringing Britain and Eastern Europe into NAFTA, establishing a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area, offering the Europeans greater influence over the development of grand strategy—the most obvious one currently is to delay and obstruct the proposed European Rapid Reaction Force. Again, however, this is an issue on which the Bush administration’s trumpet gives forth a decidedly uncertain sound; perhaps too many people are wrestling for control of the instrument.
All [of his] major battles will need to be fought philosophically before they can be won politically. They are not occasions for Disraeli’s advice that "a majority is always the best repartee." Without strong arguments to generate popular support behind them, the majorities they need will fade away. Thus far, the administration has acted more boldly than it has spoken. On such questions as the Kyoto treaty, it risks falling into the trap, identified by Princeton’s Robert George, of being "all action, no talk." It must now roll up its sleeves and speechify.
Want a fun overseas read? Here's the Guardian (UK):
Poll ratings: 62 per cent (Bill Clinton 55, George Bush Senior 56).
Best photo-op: Return of spy-plane crew.
Wears: Cowboy boots in the White House.
Banned: Jeans in the White House.
Where to head when White House is shot at : The gym.
Where to be found at 3pm on a weekday: The gym.
Political record : Makes Ronald Reagan look socialist.
They had him down, didn't they?
Here, on MediaResearch's "analysis" of press bias during Bush's opening act, are some quotes that have echoes in 2009:
"So much for bi-partisanship, Charlie [Gibson]. The Republicans rammed through this tax cut, and all but ten Democrats voted against it, and the Democrats are accusing President Bush of reneging on his promise to change the tone in Washington."
— ABC’s Linda Douglass on World News Tonight, March 8, 2001.
(Had you remembered that the Chinese shot down a American spy plane in early 2001? And that Bush said we were sorry, so that the Chinese would release the crew?)
"He did do well here. Listen, he succeeded. It’s Easter. Everyone is home, everyone is safe. It’s a win no matter how it happened. We’ll never know if it could happened earlier if he hadn’t been so hard line."
— ABC reporter and analysts George Stephanopoulos during the roundtable on This Week, April 15.
Here, then is your quiz question, which you can answer in the poll below: how much does the first hundred days tell us about a President's overall success?