Obama's "Long Hot Summer"

Eleanor Clift:

The long hot summer is typically a phrase that strikes fear in the hearts of politicians. In the '60s, it meant race riots in American cities. In the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks, it evoked an oblivious media obsessing over an intern who had gone missing and who was having an affair with a congressman, and a wave of shark attacks, which turned out to be not much of a wave after all.

The next 100 days of the Obama administration will span much of the summer, and the White House must brace for struggles both hot and long.

The three pillars of Obama's domestic agenda are health care, energy and the economy, and the president will need to show progress on all three. On the economic front, the president will have to pick a few fights to let Wall Street know he means business. Paul Equale, a Democratic consultant, predicts Obama's economic team will show more muscle in forcing bank write-downs to offload the toxic assets that have clogged the banking system.

On health care, the Democrats are determined to finally pass reform legislation, something they memorably failed to achieve the last time they had control of the White House. Should they fall short of the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, Democrats have written into the budget resolution, which Congress passed this week, a legislative procedure called "reconciliation," through which a health-care bill would be combined with the budget and passed with just 51 votes. Under congressional rules, the budget cannot be filibustered; otherwise, we might never get one. The reconciliation provision won't be triggered until Oct. 15, leaving time to judge whether Republicans are serious about wanting to work on a bipartisan health-reform bill or will vote as a bloc against whatever Obama proposes.

Obama will need to pursue his priorities while being mindful of the impact on his center and left flanks. Conservative "blue dog" Democrats are already locking horns with an emboldened Progressive Caucus, one of many family feuds that the White House will have to settle. Chrysler and General Motors could be in bankruptcy, and unemployment numbers are expected to rise each month with no relief until at least the fall; more likely, the good news won't arrive until next year.

Congressional leaders have already balked once, opposing the administration's desire to apply reconciliation to energy policy as well. Energy independence and climate change doesn't divide neatly along party lines. Michigan Democrats have fought higher fuel standards and clean-air policies along with Democrats from coal-producing states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Legislative action was thought dead until the EPA declared two weeks ago that carbon-dioxide emissions are harmful to human health and subject to regulation. The ruling boosted chances that legislation might pass—if only as a way to head off more onerous regulation.

On the foreign-policy front, the summer fighting season in Afghanistan will soon get underway, and the returning coffins that Obama now permits to be photographed could well be coming from the expanded theater of war that he authorized. With the end of the first 100 days, the transition from the Bush era to the Age of Obama is truly over. Afghanistan is Obama's war just as the economy, whether in stagnation or recovery, is his burden. And let's not forget Iraq. It's not over, however much the architects of the surge wish to claim success. When Hillary Clinton said the wave of car bombings means the insurgents realize the government is coming together, she sounded perilously close to Bush administration claims that rising violence indicated success as opposed to just more violence.

President Bush's failure to react quickly to Katrina defined him as both uncaring and incompetent, a deadly combination he was never able to overcome. With the possibility of a swine-flu pandemic breaking as he begins his second 100 days in office, Obama has shown his ability to adapt far more rapidly and gracefully than his predecessor. Obama's gifts as an orator and teacher similarly allow him to defuse some of the more corrosive terms applied to his policies. The defection of veteran lawmaker Arlen Specter from the GOP to the Democratic Party bolsters Obama's argument that he is governing from the nonideological center and has his finger on the pulse of the country. When the president is faulted for not achieving the bipartisanship he talked about in the campaign, he can now cite Specter's argument that the Republican Party has become so intolerant of dissent that there are few moderates left with which to find common ground.

In a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday, Obama said he didn't expect Specter—or any senator—to be a rubber stamp. But if the 29-year veteran of GOP Senate politics wants to find a hospitable home in his new party, Specter will have to give the Democrats his vote on some key procedural matters. "Good luck with that; he's a difficult man," says a former Senate GOP staffer. Asked how so, she explains, "He's not a team player unless he's the captain of the team, and the coach, and the owner." Judging by the Class-A deal he got to cross the aisle—keeping his seniority and winning assurances of a key committee chairmanship down the road—Obama sees Specter as key to passing health-care reform. That alone would be huge.

Howie P.S.: Regarding the "deal" Reid promised Specter, there are grumblings that the Senate Democratic caucus is going to "amend" it. Audio (14:30) from New Yorker writers Hendrik Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza: they look beyond the first 100 days at threats to Obama’s agenda: Afghanistan, Pakistan, the banking crisis, and divisions among Democrats. In another New Yorker product, "Interrogating Torture," Philip Gourevitch concludes with

But, if full justice remains impossible, surely some injustices can be corrected. Whenever crimes of state are adjudicated—at Nuremberg or The Hague, Phnom Penh or Kigali—the principle of command responsibility, whereby the leaders who give the orders are held to a higher standard of accountability than the foot soldiers who follow, pertains. There can be no restoration of the national honor if we continue to scapegoat those who took the fall for an Administration—and for us all.

Barack Obama