Obama: Too Much Too Quickly?

The annual Gridiron Dinner is one of the few social events in Washington that demands white tie and tails. The term, “white tie”, comes from the fact that besides a tailcoat, stiff collar, silk socks and patent leather shoes, men also wear a white bow tie. Women wear floor-length evening gowns and often a tiara. And usually it’s no bare shoulders, please.

Events requiring white tie and tails are, for example, banquets for visiting dignitaries and opera galas. And also the Gridiron Dinner, an annual event each spring, put on by the tradition-rich (by American standards) Gridiron Club. This exclusive journalists’ club was founded in 1885, and membership is strictly by invitation only. Anyone invited to attend a Gridiron Dinner is truly a member of the Washington elite.

Did Biden’s joke reveal a truth about the White House?

No president since Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) ever turned down an invitation to the Gridiron Dinner during his first term in office. Until Barack Obama, that is. He preferred to spend that weekend with his family at Camp David and sent his vice president, Joe Biden, instead.

The art of a successful speech at a Gridiron Dinner consists of being humorous, preferably at your own expense. Most popular are those speeches in which presidents joke about their own quirks and character weaknesses with exuberant self-mockery. George Bush gave memorable speeches there, and Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were virtuosos of the art.

This year, Vice President Joe Biden could go into the annals with his own speech. Biden explained Barack Obama’s absence, for example, by saying Obama was too busy with preparations for the Easter festivities: “He thinks it’s about him,” Biden quipped. Some in the White House didn’t think the remark was so funny. Maybe because it contained more than just a grain of truth?

When the people who elected him look back next Wednesday on his first 100 days in office, they will see a man feverishly working with messianic fervor to save the economy and the reputation of the United States, to transform U.S. society, to defeat the Islamic terrorists in the Hindu Kush, and generally trying to make the world a better place in which to live. One free of nuclear weapons, for example, and with a healthy environment.

Good popularity numbers, but deeply polarized opinions

It can’t yet be said that the honeymoon period granted each newly elected president is already over. Recent opinion polls show a stable approval rating for his performance, thus far. The Gallup polling institute reports that 64 percent of Americans in the U.S. are satisfied with the way Obama is doing his job.

The circumstances experienced by a nation going through a financial crisis help to explain the relatively high approval ratings the president enjoys. That’s why President Ronald Reagan, for example, had an even higher approval rating than Obama (67 percent) near the end of his first 100 days. Surviving the attempt on his life certainly added to his growing popularity. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had slightly less than a 60 percent approval rating at the end of their respective 100 days.

Since the sixties, no president has approached the approval ratings of John F. Kennedy (83%) and Dwight Eisenhower (72%). The Vietnam War caused the extreme polarization in U.S. society that still exists today.

No president – not even Richard Nixon – caused such a split among voters as has Barack Obama. Although 88 percent of Democrats say they are satisfied with Obama, his support among Republicans is only 27 percent. That’s a difference of 61 percent. That difference was only 51 percent with George W. Bush, and with the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, it was only 45 percent. Moderate Republican, George H.W. Bush, recorded only 38 percent, and classic southern Democrat Jimmy Carter totaled just 25 percent.

Too much mention of America’s mistakes?

That the approval numbers are so far apart (considering the hate-filled criticism dished out by conservative Republicans, radio personality Rush Limbaugh and television broadcaster Fox News, they could be even further apart) has to do with Obama’s policies. Foreign policy and security hawks think the commander in chief appeared during trips to Europe and the Caribbean as Apologist in Chief.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed by observers in Europe and Latin America that Obama has spoken more often of mistakes and new beginnings in relations during his visits than any other president before him. Of course, announcing new beginnings is part and parcel of any regime change. It’s possible that the basis for this is just part of a power politics calculation wherein Obama thinks he can get more accomplished that way than he can with sheer arrogance. Or it’s also possible that Obama believes so sincerely in his message of change that he really wants to make a radical new beginning everywhere. But despite his charm offensive, Europeans aren’t willing to send more of their troops to the Hindu Kush, and they also haven’t bought into Obama’s economic stimulus package to spur the global economy.

Criticism of “Sunshine Policies”

We won’t see for several months, perhaps not even several years, whether the nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia, beginning Monday, will bear fruit. Likewise, whether the U.S. can abandon its desire to build a nuclear missile shield in Europe, should Obama’s efforts to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program succeed. Or whether North Korea can be convinced to return to the six-party talks or continue with its nuclear program.

Critics of Obama’s “sunshine policies” warn that his many goodwill gestures will be interpreted by enemies of the U.S. as weakness. They warn that Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to whom Obama offered his hand in friendship, as well as the Castro brothers in Cuba, with whom Obama agreed to the lifting of some sanctions, will only be encouraged to continue their anti-U.S. and anti-democratic policies. In Europe, Latin America and East Asia, the imponderables just don’t quit. In Pakistan, the Taliban is closing in on the capital, Islamabad, while in southern Afghanistan they’re again as powerful as they were prior to their defeat in December 2001. And whether the U.S. can keep to its plan to withdraw from Iraq now appears questionable, in view of the attacks over the past few days.

Retrofitting U.S. capitalism?

On the domestic policy front, Obama isn’t satisfied only with attacking the problems of the banking and automobile industries and taking on trillions of dollars in new debt to avoid a recession; he also wants to rebuild U.S. capitalism from the ground up, giving government a far bigger role in the future. Just as during his election campaign, he restlessly flies around the country heralding energy and climate changes in one place and promising threatened homeowners help to keep them from foreclosure in another. In another location, he addresses the modernization of power grids and the ecologically responsible expansion and upgrading of the infrastructure. Meanwhile, the system of education financing is to be reformed, universal health care coverage introduced and, soon, the much-needed change in immigration policy brought about.

The question arises whether this is all just too much too soon. Since Obama took office, 600,000 jobs have disappeared; the number of mortgage foreclosures continues to grow; home prices keep falling; loans from commercial banks aren’t forthcoming; and in Detroit, there’s open talk of bankruptcy and Chapter 11 protection for General Motors and Chrysler. Did they really need the controversy over the CIA torture of suspected terrorists caused by Obama’s release of secret Justice Department memos?

The White House has lost control over the controversy of past anti-terror actions. Liberals demand an accounting; conservatives see the U.S. endangered because of damages to national security. Less possibly might have been more during the first 100 days; and there are 1,361 days yet to go in Obama’s first term.