Before Inauguration Day, Barack Obama said he wanted to hit the ground running. Instead, he hit the ground sprinting and hasn't stopped.
Consider: A $787 billion stimulus package. A 10-year budget including universal health insurance and a cap-and-trade system to combat global warming. Subsidies to help distressed homeowners stay in their homes. Public-private partnerships to clean up the big banks. A bailout of the auto companies. New regulations to clean up Wall Street. A G-20 meeting to harmonize global economic policies. A proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. A thaw in relations with Cuba and Venezuela. Overtures to Iran. A start to immigration reform. Even a dramatic rescue from pirates.
And this is just the first 100 days. He also has done this without breaking a sweat. Obama is the serene center of the cyclone -- exuding calm when most Americans are petrified about paying the monthly bills, offering assurance when everyone in the world is worried about loose nukes falling into the wrong hands.
All this activity has made the right angry and the left uneasy. But a whopping 65 percent of Americans think highly of him. And no president since John F. Kennedy has received such an enthusiastic welcome around the globe. By almost any measure, his presidency so far has been a triumph. (I give him only a C-plus on his economic policies so far, but that's mainly because of a provisional F on the bank bailout.)
Yet Obama's success has rested on several delicate balancing acts. Whether he continues to succeed will depend on how well he shifts his balance in the months ahead.
The choices Obama must make after the jump.
-- Robert Reich
