Richard Wolffe: Selling the 100 Days

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-26/selling-the-100-days/full/


Selling the 100 Days

by Richard Wolffe


In the White House, there’s a battle: Should Team Obama remain deadly serious or pat itself on the back? Richard Wolffe on the push to avoid another “Mission Accomplished.”

Judging from the questions from White House reporters, Obama’s senior aides have been struggling with the monumental question of whether or not to mark the national political holiday known as the first 100 days.

But that misses the point. Behind the scenes, the real discussion inside the West Wing was not about ignoring or embracing the 100-day festivities, which Obama’s aides happily dismiss as a Hallmark moment.

Instead their debate centered on a recurring dilemma facing this new administration: to look back or forward, to be sober or optimistic? Whether the issue is torture, the economy, or its own achievements after all of 100 days, the balancing act between the future and the past—between pos

Senior White House aides say there were initial plans to pre-empt the 100-day holiday and look firmly ahead to the next 100 days and beyond. What better way to avoid the hubris of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, especially at a time when thousands of Americans are losing their jobs each month? The early plan was to deliver a future-focused speech ahead of the 100 days: They were so forward-looking, they would even beat the 100-day marker itself.

But that was rejected as largely impractical. How could the president look to the future without recounting recent history and his own past? Would a forward-looking perspective sound too much like a collection of predictions and promises? Could they really leave the retrospectives to a media struggling with its own existential gloom?

snip//

That still leaves those pesky Republicans, whose elected officials have proved immune to Obama’s charms and are unlikely to celebrate a 100-day press conference. “The Republicans have been in the White House more in the last few months than they were in the eight years of Bush’s presidency,” says Axelrod. “What we can’t do, and what they apparently would like us to do, is embrace the policies of the last eight years. The major proposals of their budget are very much derivative of what we have seen already, and most people understand that the last eight years didn’t work out very well.”

In other words, the story of the first 100 days begins with an election that contained no good news for Republicans. That’s the kind of backward-looking vision that the Obama White House is happy to celebrate in Hallmark fashion.

[CTyankee]

1. Well, that is the reality. So be it. The Republicans cannot/will not

recognize reality. No good will come of that, I can assure you...

Obama just needs to continue to do what he has done. The Republicans can self destruct on their own. They are good at it...

[Cha]

2. Good ol' David Axelrod has a way of pinpointing the problem..

“The Republicans have been in the White House more in the last few months than they were in the eight years of Bush’s presidency,” says Axelrod. “What we can’t do, and what they apparently would like us to do, is embrace the policies of the last eight years.

[Tarheel_Dem]

3. The bold quotes have become clear to most rational folks. The new

administration is making a clear split from the past 8 years, although I understand that it's not quick enough for some of us. But as the president says, this is a streamliner, not a speedboat, so it's going to take time.