30 April 2009

One Hundred Days



They say that every President since FDR has been cursed with the Hundred Day thing that he started. He didn't have a choice. The nation needed a good bucking up then, and Mr. Roosevelt had to deliver.
 
Every Chief Executive has been saddled with the Honeymoon thing since. I had to tune in and watch the big press conference and see what Mr. Obama had to say about the mind-boggling set of problems he is confronting on our behalf.
 
The Republican opposition- loyal, I presume- is evaporating. They appear to be going through the same process that happened in the days of the Great Society; drawing in on itself, sharpening the ideological blades, becoming a little more shrill.
 
Senator Arlen Specter bolted the Grand Old Party out of a sense of self-preservation. Apparently his calculus indicated he could not get past the Republican primary.  Pennsylvania has always been a sort of odd state, from a demographic standpoint. Senator Rick Santorum represented a major voter segment, and he was from the fundamentalist wing of the GOP. He is long gone, ground up in the big earthquake.
 
A pal described Pennsylvania as “two great cities- Philly and Pittsburgh- surrounded by Alabama.”
 
If the comic Al Franken is eventually certified as the new junior Senator from Minnesota, that will seal the deal on the Senate. If Harry Reid can exercise some leadership, the Administration can do whatever they want. I get nervous when things get like that either way in Washington, since some incredibly bone-headed and long-lasting mistakes can be made without a lot of discussion.
 
Accordingly, I was primed for the address and the assessment of the first hundred days. The President entered the West Wing and vaulted up onto the podium. He looked relaxed, but painfully alert.
 
His opening remarks were about washing our hands and covering our mouths, which are both excellent bits of advice. I wrote them down in my notebook with the Hockey stats and the reminder to check the pressure in my tires.
 
The pandemic thing is here, by the way. Two kids in Maryland have it, apparently from exposure in school. I made a note to avoid the office. I choose not to call it Swine Flu- that is so 1970s. “New Flu” has a sort of catchy ring to it, don’t you think?
 
Sort of like Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army, ever bright, even if it happened long ago.
 
I guess that is one of the little ironies of our modern life. We have all sorts of exotic computer-based systems that enable us to pile up invisible money and plan for the future and then, whammo, some droplet of soluble invisibility falls out of the air, the lungs fill up, and there you go on the off-ramp from the Big Parade.
 
When you have your health you have everything, and that made the rest of the President’s remarks seem nicely contextualized. He doesn’t want to own the banks or the car companies, even though he does, and would like a smaller and more efficient government, should he have the time to get around to that.
 
He seemed genuinely thoughtful, like the reality of earnest people coming to see him about the most remarkable things had opened his eyes about the difficulty in getting things done here. But of course, that is the point of the system. The powers are all divided against themselves to prevent dramatic change. The President is
 
One hundred days is less than a tenth of a Presidential term, and it is really way too early to make any significant judgments about how we are doing. Some commentators think that there are some pretty profound Newt Gingrich thinks he is doing very well at what he said he would do, and that with the budget resolution we are already well down the road to someplace we aren’t going to like when we get there.
 
He wrote a great bit of analysis a pal sent along about the impact of the budget resolution on top of the two (or is it three?) stimulus packages. He quoted his daughter as saying “instead of change we can believe in, we’re going to have change in what we believe.”
 
In the same batch of messages there was a slick YouTube presentation on the demographics of the Islamic world. The conclusion was that we are all going to be Muslim by 2050, which will be pretty interesting if we get past the pandemic.
 
Everyone was polite, and the President’s responses were thoughtful. He thinks the waterboard is torture, which is a great thing. I made a note that the 26,000 of us who were put on the board in Navy training were probably traumatized. In fact, I wrote frantically, we are all victims of a big government conspiracy, and not just the one going on now.
 
I made a note: “File Class Action Suit.” I smiled. When we win, the government can print more money and then we can all retire.
 
Of course, I agree with the President when he says that things are never as good or bad as they appear, and at the moment we all have our health.
 
The cameras panned over the big room with the high ceiling, and the earnest reporters who listened in rapt attention. Helen Thomas, the Dean of the Washington Press Corps, was down in the front row, but the President did not call on her. She was brightly painted, almost like a lawn ornament. I hope she is OK, and covers her mouth and washes her hands.
 
She has been at these Press Conferences since the Grant Administration, and it really wouldn’t be the same without her.

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com