Yeah, yeah, yeah ... the 100 day mark is meaningless, arbitrary, media-created, or whatever. But let's take a look at just a few, out of the hundreds of possibilities, of the opinions we're seeing today.
An editorial from the New York Times:
The list of failed policies and urgent threats bequeathed to him by former President George W. Bush could easily be that long. In his first 14 weeks plus two days, President Obama has made a strong start at addressing many of the most critical ones.
From Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley who shocked the conservative world when he endorsed candidate Obama, says that:
... I am delighted, overall, with our president’s first 100 days. I think he has struck a fine tone overseas (trans: the U.S. is less detested than it has been in recent years). He has exhibited the "first-class temperament" that persuaded me he was the man for the job. He is, as I called him last October, "one cool cat" ... On the minus side, I think his waffling over prosecuting Bush Justice Department officials for approving the enhanced interrogation methods (trans: "torture") is detrimental and even dangerous.
Rep. Peter King is surprisingly positive:
I'm saying this now as a Republican: I think he's done surprisingly well on issues like Iraq and Afghanistan, where he has stood up to the left wing of his party ... As far as dealings with Congress, he's done very well. When he came and met with the Republicans, for example, it is helpful to him in the long run ... The fact that he established some relations earlier is going to make it possible for him to get better results.
From a NRO symposium, we have an AEI mouthpiece going with the straw man, a Heritage Foundation hack saying that we're a right-of-center nation and the backlash is coming (another "gathering storm"?). Then there's Ed Gillespie, calling Obama is a radical who hasn't reached out to Republicans and that the GOP has been smart to not oppose Obama but to offer "positive alternatives." All of this means that the first 100 days is good news for Republicans. Seriously. And Jay Nordlinger says that:
He moved very quickly to throw off the slightest restraints on abortion, and to make embryonic-stem-cell research a free-for-all. He evinced not the slightest moral qualm ... It is in the realm of his foreign-policy gestures that Obama has seemed most like that Marxist grad student: ... His soul-brother shakes and grins with Chávez ... His constant, unseemly, unmanly denigration of Bush.
Apparently NRO isn't a fan.
Mike Allen from Politico says:
President Barack Obama has one indisputable accomplishment as he nears the fabled 100-day mark: Republicans remain baffled about how to combat him.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Indeed, if the first 100 days of President Obama's term have proved anything, it is that he is a hard man to classify. He has confounded, at one time or another, people at just about every spot across the political spectrum. He likes big and activist government, but he isn't a classic liberal. He is more of a social engineer than a guardian of the old welfare state. [...]
Ultimately, what President Obama appears to want most is for his countrymen to see him as pragmatic. And indeed, that is likely what he will have to be now, for his presidency is shifting into a new stage. In the first 100 days, he's dealt with an economic crisis that compelled action, and with laying out proposals to fulfill campaign promises. Now comes the laborious work of sustaining political support for economic bailouts and seeing proposals through the congressional meat grinder.
And what about Fox News? What do they think? Well, instead of giving their take on President Obama's first 100 days, let's just look at their coverage over the past 100 days.
I'm sure you can crack the code on what they think.