Commentary: Obama's 100 days of problems?

Story Highlights
Julian Zelizer: In first 100 days, Obama administration encounters rough water

He says stimulus bill and flawed nominations are causing problems

Zelizer: JFK was able to overcome rocky start, Clinton and Carter were dogged by it

He says the stakes are enormous for Obama given huge size of stimulus bill


By Julian E. Zelizer
Special to CNN
   
Editor's note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.


Julian Zelizer says Barack Obama's Hundred Days are being shaped by debate over the economic stimulus bill.

PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- Tomorrow marks the end of the third week of President Barack Obama's Hundred Days. After what can only be described as a euphoric inauguration, Obama has encountered some trouble.

Despite his effort to court Republicans in the House, he failed to obtain a single GOP vote for the economic recovery package.

The Senate is moving toward an expected passage of a similar stimulus bill, obtaining the crucial support of three Republican senators only by cutting spending by tens of billions.

Given that most liberal economists believed the House version much too small to repair the state of the economy, for many in the Obama administration, these reductions were less than satisfactory.

The wrangling over the economic legislation compounded an already turbulent week when former Sen. Tom Daschle had to withdraw his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services, one of several nominations that tarnished the president's image as a reformer.

President Obama is partway through the artificial period that has been used as a benchmark for presidents since Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, when reporters borrowed a term that had been used to describe Napoleon's famous march from exile to Louis XVIII's return to power in 1815.

As I have written in a previous commentary, the concept of the Hundred Days is an invention of the New Deal but it is one that matters politically. Journalists, pundits, scholars, and even voters use them to evaluate the early performance of a president.

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