Obama is Blazing a New Trail With His Bold Moves on the Economy

For most Americans, Barack Obama's most vivid presidential moment came on election night. He stepped before a quarter-million jubilant supporters in Chicago's Grant Park and a worldwide television audience and proclaimed that a new era of change had arrived. As the first African-American president, he had made history. As one of the youngest presidents ever elected, at 47, he promised to undertake a generational shift and move the nation from confrontation and polarization to conciliation and compromise. He went on to echo some iconic leaders from America's past—Abraham Lincoln and his mystical belief in the Union, Franklin Roosevelt and his infectious optimism, John F. Kennedy and his call to service. All in all, it was Barack Obama at his charismatic best.

But now that he has moved past the first months in office, the narrative of Obama's actual presidency, including his policy directions, his strengths, and his weaknesses as a leader, has become more clear. Since that electric Chicago night back in November, he has pivoted from poetry to prose, playing down charisma and emphasizing competence. And he has moved with impressive speed to focus on the nation's No. 1 problem: the recession and the collapsing financial industry, widely considered the worst economic calamity since the Depression. In the process, Obama is pushing the political pendulum from the conservative approach of Ronald Reagan, who said government was the problem, to a more liberal philosophy that holds that only Washington has the wherewithal to provide the answers. More than anything else, he has brought big, activist government back into play.

"I'm pleased with the progress we've made, but I'm not satisfied," Obama told a town meeting in Arnold, Mo., April 29. "I'm confident in the future, but I'm not content with the present—not when there are workers who are still out of jobs, families who still can't pay their bills; not when there are too many Americans who can't afford their heathcare." His answer: more action by Washington.

Like most of their recent predecessors, Obama and his aides weren't fond of the 100-day yardstick for measuring a new chief executive's success, arguing that it has become artificial and outmoded since it was used to assess the start of Franklin Roosevelt's regime in 1933. Still, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says, "We've had the most productive first 100 days probably since Roosevelt."

It remains to be seen if Obama's agenda will cure the nation's ills, but there is no doubt that he has thought big and moved fast. Last November and December, before he took office, in a series of meetings in his hometown of Chicago, he concluded that the economy was in such peril that he would have to take drastic action. Relying on key aides, including Larry Summers (now the chief White House economic adviser) and Timothy Geithner (now treasury secretary), he fashioned a massive program involving astronomical government spending to create jobs and dramatic moves to bail out the financial industry and the nation's automakers—and moved decisively starting on Inauguration Day.

Ambitious agenda. Working with the Democratic majority in Congress and with negligible Republican support, Obama won congressional approval for a $787 billion stimulus package and persuaded Congress to approve a $3.5 trillion budget outline for 2010 that included a $1.2 trillion deficit. He arranged massive bailouts for failing banks and auto companies and promised much more government intervention and regulation of troubled sectors in the future.

Looking ahead, he will have an opportunity to reshape the Supreme Court by appointing a replacement for retiring Justice David Souter. Obama also is eager to enact an overhaul of the nation's healthcare system that would move toward universal health coverage and, he hopes, lower costs. He is pushing for a similarly historic program to limit use of fossil fuels through a "carbon tax" and other methods. There are signs that he will do this not only through sweeping legislation but by also having the Environmental Protection Agency play a larger role. And Obama wants to reform education, which will entail pouring more money into the system. White House aides say immigration legislation could come later. All this may be facilitated by the sudden party switch of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania from Republican to Democrat. Specter calculated that this would help him in his 2010 re-election bid. But in the meantime, his move would give the Democrats a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate if Al Franken is seated from Minnesota, as expected, after ongoing legal challenges.