Some Obama/McClatchy "Hundred Day" Hackery

(And also posted over here.)

I realize that the topic du jour, in addition to the swine flu outbreak that originated in Mexico, seems to be the first 100 days of the Obama presidency (I thought this presented some interesting numbers given this milestone, referencing an ABC/WaPo poll).

And McClatchy chimes in here, skewing perceptions based on vague non-reporting and misinterpretation, as well as concocting themes about Obama and Democrats in general that the majority of this country doesn’t care about (shocking that this comes from an otherwise fine news organization)…

Obama's average approval rating for his first three months in office was 63 percent in the Gallup Poll.

That's the highest since Jimmy Carter's 69 percent rating after his first 100 days more than three decades ago. However, Carter's presidency is widely considered a failure, which underscores the risk of reading too much into a president's first 100 days.

Oh yes, the “conventional wisdom” tells us that Carter was a failure, and he and Obama are both Dems, so... (and by the way, here is yet another link to Walter Rodgers’ column defending our 39th president).

(Also, on the subject of Carter, Dick Polman of The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us here that his successor, The Sainted Ronnie R of course, “inherited an economic mess that lingered for several years,” though it should be noted from here that, despite Carter’s admitted problems with inflation and unemployment – and OPEC never gets a mention from Carter antagonists as one of the causes for this, by the way – “he could claim an increase of nearly eight million jobs and a decrease in the budget deficit, measured in percentage of the gross national product” by the time he left office - and here's a reality check on Reagan's economic policies from former Clinton Labor Secretary Bob Reich.)

You know, it’s funny, though – I don’t recall too many pundits saying after Dubya became president (when it comes to comparisons) that “well, his approval numbers are good after a hundred days, even registering 90 percent after 9/11 (true), but Warren Harding was a popular president also who we now would consider to be a failure.”

Also…

Gerhard Peters, a co-founder of the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara , said that Obama's sweeping agenda could make him a transformational president, just as Roosevelt made America more reliant on government and as Ronald Reagan made it less so.

In response, please allow me to quote from pg. 61 of Will Bunch’s great book on “the Gipper” (here)…

In fact, the federal government grew in size under Reagan. The feds' civilian workforce increased during his two terms from 2.8 million to 3 million, even though his successors George H.W. Bush and especially Bill Clinton showed that government could be slashed (down to just 2.68 million by the time the budget-balancing Democrat left the White House). While the Gipper rode into Washington with tough talk about wielding an axe that might slash two cabinet agencies (Education and Energy), he left eight years later having added one, Veterans Affairs. Today, Reagan's biggest mythmakers will insist that he slashed federal spending. But he didn't. While Reagan was in office, federal spending grew by 2.5 percent per year, even when adjusted for inflation. As a share of America's gross national product, federal spending barely moved during the Reagan years, dropping just a couple of tenths of a percentage point.

"The major failure of the Reagan Administration was the failure to discipline spending," William A. Niskanen, who served on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers until 1985 and then chaired the conservative Cato Institute, told the New York Times in 1987. "We have a bigger government, with higher spending. We've slowed regulation down, but we haven't reversed it. In other words, there was no Reagan Revolution."

Returning to the column (it gets better)…

Obama signed orders to expand access to information under Freedom of Information and Presidential Records laws. But while making good on his promise to make government more transparent, Obama's White House nonetheless tries to shape the media message by limiting access to much information via selective leaks by unnamed sources.

Example? And assuming that’s true, how exactly is that different from how anyone else operates in Washington?

And still more…

The president also has begun laying the groundwork for sweeping health care and global warming legislation. He says he'll preserve private health insurance but offer more government-managed insurance so that everyone is covered. Critics think that will guarantee significant tax increases down the road, despite the president's promise to raise taxes on only the wealthiest Americans.

Well, regardless of what the “critics” say (do these people have names?), it should be noted from here that approximately 95 percent of this country saw the beginnings of the benefit of Obama’s tax cut as part of the stimulus legislation on April 1st.

Also…

Obama's also fallen short so far in his effort to convert his campaign's effective grassroots and Internet operations to a force that can help him govern. Lawmakers report no evidence of political impact from those efforts.

This is vague as hell - which lawmakers are they talking about? Besides, concerning any issues Obama may be having with “convert his campaign's effective grassroots and Internet operations,” I think this post documenting the technical issues the Obama White House is facing has a lot to do with their ability to mobilize forces and help to move the White House agenda forward in Congress.

And oh yeah, I forgot this one…

Obama also opened a new era of relations with Congress, moving quickly to enact legislation that Democrats couldn't get past Bush: expanded children's health insurance coverage (paid for with higher cigarette taxes) and pay equity legislation giving women more grounds for lawsuits.

Uh, no; as noted here…

(The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act) amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. The law was a direct answer to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins at the date the pay was agreed upon, not at the date of the most recent paycheck, as a lower court had ruled.

Basically, Ledbetter was punished by Hangin’ Judge JR and the Supremes because the discriminatory payment practice that victimized her was something she didn’t discover until after the 180-day window of the first discriminatory payment had passed; one way to describe the reading of the High Court would be parsimonious, though there are many other descriptions that I'd like to use here though they wouldn’t be “PG” rated, as it were.

The law as signed by President Obama arising from this doesn’t provide “more grounds for lawsuits.” If employers do what they’re supposed to, there won’t be lawsuits related to this at all.

After reading this utter dreck of a political “analysis,” I really can't believe that it took five writers to produce this, let alone one (and news organizations can't understand why non-subscribers won't pay for online content...).

Update: Speaking of President Carter, I neglected to mention the Op-Ed he wrote in the New York Times today calling to reinstitute the assault weapons ban, another 100 percent, dead-right stand that should be a no-brainer for anyone claiming allegiance to the Democratic Party (echoed by Bob Herbert on Saturday here).