It's Been 3 Weeks, Not 4 Years

A rocky stretch this early won't define Obama's presidency
By Gabriel Winant,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 11, 2009 9:38 AM CST
It's Been 3 Weeks, Not 4 Years
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talks to reporters after the final passage of the stimulus bill, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009, at the Capitol in Washington.    (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Stop worrying. “Sure, President Obama had a lousy week. A week is not a presidency.” In fact, writes Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, despite Tom Daschle's withdrawal and the bumpy rollout of the stimulus, Obama is outperforming any reasonable standard. He’s signed major laws on pay equity and children’s health care, and his stimulus—finally passed—only barely differs from his original proposal.

“The shape of a presidency cannot be discerned from its first few weeks,” Marcus writes. At this point, President Clinton was 2 months from losing his fight for a $16 billion stimulus, and President Bush "was being lauded for his bipartisan outreach." Sit tight, Marcus advises: "Only if you expected to wake up the day after the inauguration and see unicorns prancing across the Mall should you be particularly surprised at the current state of play."
(More Barack Obama stories.)

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