On the last Friday in March, President Barack Obama summoned leaders of the banking industry to the White House, where they gathered around a mahogany table in the sumptuous State Dining Room. On this day there was not a piece of fruit or can of soda in sight. At each place was a glass of water. No ice. No refills.
The president’s message was as hard and crusty as a slab of day-old bread.
He urged the businessmen to view corporate excess through the eyes of Americans who are belt-tightening their way through the recession. Obama mentioned the carpet stains in the Oval Office — to make a frugal contrast with million-dollar executive suites appointed with $8,000 trash cans.
The bankers protested, citing the specialization of their field and the need to pay handsomely to avoid a brain drain. Obama cut them off: “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
Direct, assertive and utterly self-assured, Obama has used his broad popularity, a driving ambition and sweeping agenda to move America in a wholly new direction.
Just shy of 100 days in office, he has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison and a troop withdrawal from Iraq, made it easier for women to sue for job discrimination, eased restrictions on federally funded stem-cell research, extended health care to millions of children, ousted the head of General Motors, reached out to the Muslim world, moved to ease tensions with Cuba, traveled to Canada, Europe and Latin America, and set aside huge tracts of wilderness for federal protection.
More broadly, Obama has seized on the worst economic crisis since the 1930s — exploiting it, critics say — and set out to reshape major aspects of everyday life: the price we pay to see a doctor, the size of our children’s classrooms, the fuel we put in our cars.
If Obama’s history-making campaign offered hope, the Obama administration has delivered audacity; his vision of an activist government has been so vast, Washington now guarantees not only savings accounts but bad brakes on a Buick.
“You can carp and gripe,” said Allan Lichtman, a historian at American University. “But you really have to go back as far as Franklin Roosevelt for this much coming out of a newly elected president.”
Whether dealing with imperious bankers or Somali pirates, Obama as chief executive looks a lot like Obama the candidate: the calmest one at the table, ribbing stressed-out aides and sipping bottled water as his lieutenants guzzle caffeine.
Not that his performance was always so smooth.
After a quick start, a series of controversies slowed hiring for the administration, leaving hundreds of desks vacant and phones unanswered; it took three tries to land a commerce secretary. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the point man on the economy, relied on holdovers from the Bush administration to shape Obama’s policies, and botched his debut so badly he helped send markets off a cliff.
For a man who considers himself a good listener, Obama sometimes appeared tone-deaf, underestimating public disgust with a would-be health-care czar, Tom Daschle, who rode around in a chauffeured Cadillac and failed to pay taxes on the perk. Obama was slow to detect the populist backlash brewing when tens of millions in taxpayer-funded bonuses went to executives who helped tank the economy.
At times, the nation’s orator in chief struggled to find the right tone — sometimes too grim, sometimes too glib — when talking to a country that needed to hear hard truths as well as gentle reassurance. (Last week, Obama gave a speech touting economic improvement the same day lousy consumer spending figures were released.)
When Obama’s agenda threatened to hit a wall inside the Washington Beltway, he took to the road to soak up support from friendly, campaign-style crowds.
But more important than personal adulation was something else Americans seemed willing to give their young president — something seen in robust poll numbers and a recognition that things weren’t going to improve overnight. The country was willing to be patient.
A head start
On Jan. 21, the first full day of the Obama administration, the president stepped into the Oval Office at 8:35 a.m. He spent the first 10 minutes alone, reading a private note that former President George W. Bush had left behind: “To: #44, From: #43.” Then, wearing a starched white shirt, sky-blue tie and no jacket — his would be a less formal White House — Obama went to work behind Bush’s old desk.
The transfer of power in Washington is often jarring. But mentally, Obama had been easing into the presidency for some time, especially since mid-September, when Lehman Brothers collapsed in the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. The economy was in free fall. Republican John McCain was dithering over whether to participate in the first presidential debate. And the country had long since stopped looking to Bush for answers.
Maybe it was that head start, or his apparent unflappability, but as president, Obama moved quickly to assert himself and begin reordering policies at home and abroad. The media, always a bit fawning over a new president, breathlessly chronicled Obama’s every move. Republicans were less impressed.
Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent had been to White House events before, but never one like Obama’s Super Bowl bash. There was a Wii in the East Wing and kids running all over. The president circulated with brownies and cookies. When Dent’s son and a friend needed to use the bathroom, they asked the guy with the cookies for directions. “How should I know?” Obama joked. “I’ve only been here 10 days.”
Early on, the rank and file seemed to appreciate the effort. When Obama went to the Hill to sell his $800 billion economic rescue bill, House Republicans gave him two standing ovations, even though their leader, John Boehner of Ohio, had just urged them to vote against it.
In the end, angry over taxes, the size and scope of the package, and their lack of input, not a single Republican House member did.
But Obama continued his courtship, opening the White House for cocktails and hosting a state dinner that featured the nation’s governors dancing hands on hips in a bipartisan conga line. To White House strategists, the measure of success was not winning GOP votes but showing the country that, after all the animosity of the Bush years, Obama was at least trying.
“I’ll keep hugging you, you keep hitting me. Doesn’t bother me none,” said Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago congressman and Obama’s chief of staff. “If I keep hugging and you keep hitting, it’s not my fault. Guess who gets blamed?”
Grueling pace
From the start, warp speed was the resting heart rate at the White House, grinding people down. Just about everyone had at least one head cold the first month. A fatigued national security aide dozed off during an afternoon briefing.
Each day seemed like a week, each week seemed like a month. Take week six: Obama hosted the conga-dancing governors on Sunday night, then Monday morning served muffins and a lecture on his stimulus bill. On Tuesday he delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress, calling for expensive energy, education and health-care programs and promising an ocean of red ink. On Wednesday, news leaked that the Obamas were closing in on a puppy. On Thursday, Obama rolled out his $3.5 trillion budget. On Friday, surrounded by troops at Camp Lejeune, N.C., he announced his plan to wind down the war in Iraq.
Halfway to the 100-day mark, Obama had already signed into law seven major pieces of legislation, including the biggest spending bill in American history. “Never allow a good crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said. “It’s an opportunity to do what the political system and the inertia of the system have prevented.”
Assuming leadership of the free world obviously requires some adjustments. But if Obama was bemused by all the pampering, he had no problem seizing power. His White House quickly assumed the persona of its chief tenant: on point, no-nonsense, without a lot of wasted time or effort.
Meetings start on time and stay on topic. Participation is limited to those who have a reason to show; there is little regard for apple-polishers, or people seeking face time with the president. When he’s not happy, Obama doesn’t holler or flap his arms; disapproval is meted out in a clipped tone. “‘This is what needs to happen. This is what hasn’t happened. This is what in the next few days is going to happen,'” Gibbs quoted the president, likening him to a disappointed parent.
A typical day begins with a 7 a.m. workout in the third-floor gym, followed by breakfast with the Obama daughters, Sasha and Malia, policy briefings in the Oval Office and then a series of tightly spaced meetings or public appearances. For lunch, he orders whatever he fancies: cheeseburgers and waffle fries more often than one might think. On Fridays, he eats alone with Vice President Joe Biden.
While Obama eats dinner, staffers prepare the night’s reading, which is dispatched to the residential quarters in color-coded folders. He sometimes pores over them until after midnight, long past Bush’s strict 10 p.m. bedtime.
Like every president, Obama is largely walled off from the world beyond the iron gates of the White House. His Blackberry is a lifeline to old friends, who still call him Barack. (Unless they want to tease him. Then, following Michelle Obama’s lead, it’s “Mr. President.”) The Chicago crowd has created a buddy system, rotating house guests to spend weekends in Washington.
Obama also tries to stay connected with people by reading 10 letters a day — selected from more than 250,000 a week — from Americans sharing their hopes, sorrows and things that keep them awake nights. He answers about half.
“I think this is his greatest single concern,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser. “Being kind of caught in the bubble and cut off from people.”
Measuring the man
The first 100 days of a presidency have been a milestone since the epic days of Roosevelt’s New Deal. It is an arbitrary measure, and not always a good one.
But the opening of Obama’s administration has answered at least one question that hung over his improbable White House bid: whether a freshman senator, still shy of his 50th birthday and just a few years removed from the Illinois statehouse, was prepared to face the responsibility and wield the awesome powers of the presidency.
It will take much longer to determine whether Obama’s actions were wise or successful. But from the start he took the reins, and pulled hard.
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Review: Obama’s first 100 days
See just how much happened in Obama’s first 100 days in office at chicagotribune.com/100days
