Obama’s 100 days
‘US President Barack Obama has completed 100 days in office – a traditional moment for taking stock of progress.
Here we attempt to assess how has he done, measured against his own pre-election pledges and goals.’ – BBC
‘A hundred days is a journalistic conceit. The closest parallel is Franklin Roosevelt, who used his first days to bombard Congress with measures to confront the Great Depression, but Roosevelt only had to deal with a domestic crisis, not two wars as well. It is too soon to judge Barack Obama’s presidency. However, it is not premature to assess either the scale of his ambition or his vision. Nor is it right to lapse into the comfort zone of cynicism. Things are bound to go wrong. Some of the many balls he has thrown in the air will come crashing down. But that does not invalidate the purpose.’ – Editorial, The Guardian
‘Nobody feels like hanging out tinsel to mark Barack Obama’s first one hundred days – least of all the President himself. After the cheering crowds in Grant Park and the choked-up crowds on Inauguration Day went home, he has been left with a depression, a slew of wars, and an unravelling climate. Mario Cuomo, the former mayor of New York, said politicians “campaign in poetry, but govern in prose” – and Obama has had to hit the prose hard. So now George W. Bush has been despatched to torture only the English language, has “change come to America”, as Obama promised?’ – Johann Hari, The Independent
‘President Obama can celebrate his 100th day in office today knowing that he is one step closer to securing unfettered power in Washington – and domination across ever bigger swaths of America.
The dramatic defection of veteran Senator Arlen Specter from Republican ranks has put Democrats on course to gain a congressional “super-majority” for the first time in a generation.’ – Tom Baldwin, The Times
‘What’s clear now, looking back, is that no government is ever more powerful than on the day it is elected. A landslide – Obama in 2008, Labour in 1997 – gives the winning party the chance, as the word suggests, to remake the landscape. Whatever they want to do suddenly seems feasible simply because they want to do it.’ – Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian
‘It is an arbitrary number, of course, and it offers almost no clue to the eventual verdict, either of the voters or of history. But it is still a landmark and one which any elected leader knows will be seen as setting the tone for what follows. Barack Obama’s first 100 days were always bound to be subject to particular scrutiny, not only because of the hopes generated by his campaign, but because of his uniqueness as the first African-American President and the national and global economic crisis in which he took over.’ – Leader, The Independent
MPs’ expenses
‘John Mann is one of the clearest Labour voices on expenses reform. He’s sadly also one of the only ones. He’s put a great piece on the Progress website today that suggests MPs should operate like civil servants, with a £127.50 overnight allowance (receipted, natch) for when they are out of town on business. Which, he points out, is just about exactly what the county Hall Travel Lodge acros the bridge from the commons charges.’ – Benedict Brogan, telegraph.co.uk
‘Gordon Brown has told MPs they should show “some humility” and remember that it is taxpayers who pay for their expenses.’ – Sky News
‘Gordon Brown’s problems over the expenses paid to MPs mounted last night when he came under all-party pressure to scrap tomorrow’s Commons vote on reforming the system.’ – Andrew Grice, The Independent
‘Gordon Brown last night raised the stakes in the battle to reform MPs’ expenses and allowances by turning a Commons vote into a test of his authority in the face of a sustained revolt within the Labour party.’ – Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour, The Guardian
‘Tory plans are muddled and baffling’
‘I wish I could say the same about the rest of the country, which seems to be suspended in a state of vague fantasy about the Cameron Conservatives (are they still compassionate? I have lost track); hoping they will be OK, but not quite sure. And how can anyone be sure, when the Tory programme lacks all coherence.’ – Alice Miles, The Times
Beating the BNP
‘Unless the rest of us get our act together, the British National party could easily win three seats – and quite possibly six or more – in June’s European elections. To win in the north-west it needs just 8% of the vote, barely 1.5% more than it got in 2004 – the days of near full employment and before the credit crunch; in the West Midlands only an extra 1.6%; and in Yorkshire and the Humber just 4.3% more. Recently the party has won council seats in byelections, polling – according to the BBC – an average of 14% in 60 wards: close to the threshold necessary to get a seat in almost every European constituency in Britain.’ – Peter Hain, The Guardian
‘The Tories were branded “abhorrent” yesterday after trying to recruit a former BNP activist as a candidate.
Conservatives in Blackburn approached Nick Holt, who stood for the far-right party in the 2005 general election.’ – Jason Beattie, The Mirror