Well at this stage of every modern Presidency we pause to reflect on how, no matter how impressive the current President's early accomplishments may be, they ain't jack shit compared to what FDR did in his first hundred. And so it is now. But that's ok, cuz Obama's done a hell of a lot, and the stage has been set for much greater things to come (Allah willing).
And of course he got a nice little gift to round things out yesterday with Arlen crossing the aisle... but I'll post more on that another day.
In honor of this "Hallmark" day here are links to a whole bunch of different people talking about what it all means...
The NYT
The WSJ
The American Prospect on his foreign policy
The American Prospect on his domestic policy.
Joe Klein
Andrew Sullivan
Arianna Huffington
John Dickerson
David Rothkopf
Christopher Buckley
Rep. Peter King (R)
Mike Allen
Michael Tomasky (and video)
Reihan Salam
Stanley Crouch
Ana Marie Cox
Paul Begala
Kathleen Parker
Eric Alterman
Sean Wilentz
Lanny Davis
John Avlon
comparing Obama to other presidents
and of course the imminently serious Sean Hannity:
The White House blog has posted an extensive slide show of its behind the scenes pics that's definitely worth checking out. (also on Flickr)
Time mag also has some nice pics.
100 days of Obama's Facebook feed
Media Matters wants you to vote on the worst media moment of Obama's first 100 days:
100 days of Fox News:
100 days of No:
and more...
President's who fared poorly during their first 100 (with facial features!):
I'll close with a worthwhile thought:
we should take a moment to respect the miracle that these 100 days happened at all. Consider what we have come through in the last 12 years or so of conservative dominance: a politicized impeachment, an election in which the actual winner did not become president, a staggering usurpation of executive power, a long war premised on lies, a partly successful effort at one-party control, the most systematic violation of civil liberties since the Red Scare, a disgraceful and systematic embrace of barbaric behavior at the highest levels of government.
Step back any distance, and you'd say we've gone through an electoral crisis, several iterations of constitutional crisis, and a crisis of legitimacy. And yet here we are, with the constitution and our electoral democracy intact, a new leader and a new majority, diligently and democratically trying to undo the damage and build a new future. That's not the work of a hundred days or a thousand.
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