Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=a5cs50l5X0Hk&refer=home
‘Can You Get in Here?’ Echoes Obama 100 Days of No Small Plans
By Michael Tackett
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- In a little-noticed speech April 16, President Barack Obama took his closing line from Daniel Burnham, the master planner of Chicago, in a phrase that could be the motto of his young presidency: “Make no little plans.”
To date, Obama has reached into the executive suites of General Motors Corp., Citigroup Inc. and American International Group Inc., and proposed new regulation of Wall Street. He reshaped war strategy in Afghanistan, authorized Navy Seals to shoot Somali pirates holding a U.S. cargo-ship captain, and flew to Turkey to try to recast America’s image in the Muslim world.
He also found time to fill out a bracket with his picks in the NCAA basketball tournament, correctly predicting the University of North Carolina’s championship. And he brought a dog to the White House to complete a family tableau.
The president called his agenda “unprecedented” in its “scale and speed,” raising the question of whether he has overloaded the circuits of government and put at risk his most urgent task -- fixing the U.S. economy. All this has happened in the first 100 days.
If Bill Clinton once lamented that he didn’t have a true crisis during his presidency, Obama confronts the opposite environment and has responded with an agenda as broad as the range of troubles the nation faces.
“At the beginning of his presidency, President Obama is doing very well,” says Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican. “But I am afraid if you try to do 17 things at once, he won’t do the one or two things as well as he should.”
Early Stumbles
Obama’s first weeks haven’t been stumble-free. Three Cabinet choices withdrew after the vetting process broke down. Obama faces pressure from some in his own Democratic Party to pursue prosecution of Bush administration officials who may have authorized torture. Republicans also quickly peeled away, undercutting Obama’s pledge of bipartisanship and voting almost unanimously against his stimulus and budget plans in Congress.
By any measure, his pace has been furious.
Consider one day, March 26. Obama’s morning began with a national-security briefing about North Korea’s threatened missile launch. He then talked with aides about a recommendation to force the resignation of GM Chairman Rick Wagoner. Next up: putting final touches on a new Afghanistan war strategy, followed by more talks about government efforts to save GM.
“I went back to my office and said, ‘My God, what else could happen?’” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said in an interview in the West Wing. “And then the phone rings, and it’s Rahm saying, ‘Can you get in here? They have just evacuated Fargo,’” he said, referring to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Daunting Challenges
Obama, 47, has taken on so much, so soon that his challenges may be as daunting as Franklin Roosevelt’s during the Great Depression or Abraham Lincoln’s at the start of the Civil War.
“The multiple problems that he’s facing are somewhat unique,” says Doris Kearns Goodwin, a historian who has written biographies of Roosevelt and Lincoln.
“It’s true, he’s not facing the depth of crisis that Lincoln was, when the country was split apart; nor is the economic situation as troubling as FDR’s,” she says. “But neither of them had to face the foreign-policy challenges that Obama does. And the economic situation was not as globally connected.”
Obama, like Roosevelt, can see connections among seemingly separate issues, Kearns says. For Roosevelt, advances on civil rights and women’s rights were important in gaining public support for U.S. intervention in World War II. For Obama, progress on health care, energy and financial regulation are important to the long-term strength of the economy, she says.
Leadership Style
“The most important thing to look at is not simply the external accomplishments or difficulties, but rather what we have seen about the leadership style of this man,” Goodwin says. “That is the foundation that will determine the rest of his presidency. We have seen somebody who remains pretty steady under a lot of crises.”
Alexander says Obama would be better off taking on a small number of large issues.
“It reminds me of a group of lawyers and academics sitting in a faculty meeting to see how many good ideas they can come up with,” he says. “Any president who accomplishes two or three big things in a term, that is usually considered a big success.”
On his biggest challenge, the economy shows some signs of improvement, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rising 7.6 percent since Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration and shares jumping at banks that got money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Still, unemployment continues to rise to a 25-year high of 8.5 percent this month.
Leveraging Popularity
Obama has leveraged his popularity -- and near-unanimous support among Democrats -- to deal with the crises with a force few expected of him based on his brief career in Washington.
“There is an element of risk any time you try and do anything,” Axelrod says. “But there’s no doubt that, given the state the country is in right now, the greatest risk of all would be to be timid.”
While Obama can point to victories like the passage of his financial-rescue package, the signing of an equal-pay law and expansion of a children’s health-insurance program, he hasn’t had such success on his pledge to end partisan polarization in Washington. Republicans make almost daily attacks that Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are pushing radical changes.
Partisan Politics
“He ceded the details of policy making to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and they don’t have a bipartisan bone in their body,” says Ed Gillespie, White House counselor to President George W. Bush and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Axelrod counters that Obama’s goals reflect mainstream solutions: “Despite what our friends on the other side say, we recognize that there are limits and we know what they are.”
So far, the American public gives Obama high marks, with an approval rating of about 62 percent, according to the Gallup Poll. That places him below John Kennedy (83 percent), Dwight Eisenhower (73 percent) and Ronald Reagan (68 percent) at similar points after they took office, and almost identical to the ratings for Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Obama ranks ahead of Bill Clinton (55 percent) and George H.W. Bush (56 percent), according to Gallup polls taken at about the 100-day mark.
Even with the blizzard of activity, Obama has asked for patience alongside his urgent calls for change.
‘The Long Haul’
“The good thing about Obama is that he has the ability to take a long-range view,” Axelrod says. “This is a town that scores you every single day. There is no doubt that we want to see results as quickly as we can, but he is constantly reminding us that we are in this for the long haul.”
The president also pays attention to how his administration’s story is told. The author of two best-selling books, Obama knows the power of a compelling narrative.
“I think the fact that because he was a writer he probably understands the story arc better than most anybody since Reagan, who understood the story arc with his film background,” says Matthew Dowd, who conducted polling and developed strategy for George W. Bush.
“Having watched this the last 25 years, the tone and manner with which you convey it is more important than the substance of the policy,” Dowd says. “It gives the American people a directional signal on where they need to go. I think he’s tried to balance the warning about dire times ahead but also giving confidence. He’s done as good a job as anybody.”
‘A New Foundation’
In a speech on the economy at Georgetown University on April 14, Obama framed his approach as building “a new foundation” to preserve America’s strength. The foundation, he said, will be “built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century”: new regulations for Wall Street; support for education; investments in energy and technology; lower health-care costs; and budget cuts to shrink the national debt.
“His speeches do tend to tell stories,” Goodwin says. “The one around the ‘new foundation’ and the need for the five pillars to be built on rock instead of sand -- that is a visual image. And he’s got those five pillars. Now if he can achieve them, that will create a transforming presidency.”
After inheriting a recession from his predecessor, Obama is reaching the point where he will be held accountable for results. “By moving so aggressively and with such massive scope, it’s all his now,” Gillespie says.
Discourages Infighting
Obama, who served only part of one term as a senator from Illinois, came to the Oval Office with no significant executive experience. His aides say he delegates authority, solicits dissenting views and discourages infighting.
He also has assembled a high-powered foreign-policy team to work with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with few outward signs of conflict. Former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was named a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan; former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell is the U.S. emissary to the Middle East, and veteran diplomat Dennis Ross is an adviser on the Persian Gulf and southwest Asia.
“He has a very disciplined mind,” says Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. “Because of his legal training, he goes right to the crux of the argument. Then he just drills it.”
“I’ve seen him get upset over a situation, but it’s not lasting, it’s not vindictive, that’s not how he operates. If he sees you playing cheap politics, he gets really hacked,” Emanuel says.
More often, Obama projects the demeanor of someone with a low resting pulse rate. And he has tried to maintain balance, managing morning workouts and evening dinners with his family.
‘Sheer Pleasure’
“The other important thing we have seen in him is the sheer pleasure in the job,” Goodwin says. “It’s important that he seems to be able to relax. That’s why having his family there is key. At the same time, doing the basketball brackets, those are important things.
“Roosevelt had cocktail hour every night when you couldn’t talk about the war,” she says. “Lincoln told funny stories and went to the theater. The best presidents have found ways to relax.”
And somehow, race has played a surprisingly small role for the first black president.
“He’s gone from being Jackie Robinson to being Tiger Woods,” Dowd says. “He started as a symbol who had to prove himself. Now, like Tiger Woods, you don’t look at him as an African-American. People now see him as a really good speaker and a really good politician who has led the country really well.”
In some ways, even with a long scorecard of accomplishments in a short time, the early days of his tenure may prove to be Obama’s easy ones.
“We are just at the beginning of a long march,” Axelrod says.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Tackett in Washington at mtackett@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 26, 2009 19:00 EDT
