Energy aplenty, no miracles

WASHINGTON - BARACK Obama opened his presidency by drawing an unflinching portrait of the challenges. Then he set about turning those perils into possibilities.

In a dizzying dash to the 100-day mark, Obama made a down payment on the changes he'd promised and delivered a trillion-dollar wallop to wake up the moribund economy. He put the country on track to end one war, reorient another and redefine what it means to be a superpower.

All this with a cool confidence that has made increasing numbers of Americans hopeful that the country may at last be heading in the right direction.

The public couldn't get enough of it, fixating on Team Obama's every move: the arrival of family dog Bo; the president showing up for work in his shirt-sleeves; the first lady's moxie in baring her arms; Sasha and Malia's swing set; even a visit to the White House by the surviving Grateful Dead. Obama says it is a 'weird fishbowl' that he has jumped into.

Not everyone's impressed. For all that went right with the president's liftoff (after that small matter of the flubbed oath of office), Obama's opening moves have fallen short in the eyes of many, and have left others wondering where it all will lead.

Republicans largely stiffed the president on his call for bipartisanship and cast him as a weak leader on the world stage. Liberals groused that he could have done more and wondered whether he's too prone to compromise. Deficit hawks worried that he's blown a gaping a hole in the budget.

Almost overlooked in all the hoopla is the historic nature of Mr Obama's tenure as the first black president. There's been little time to even think about that issue, which commanded so much attention during the campaign, as Mr Obama has grappled with a seizing economy and has rushed pell-mell to reverse the legacy of eight years of Republican rule.

'You'd be hard put to find another president facing those kinds of challenges who has acted as intelligently and aggressively to meet the challenges head on,' said presidential historian Andrew Polsky, a professor at Hunter College in New York. 'He hasn't pushed things to the back burner. Of course, whether any of this works is another question, and it's too soon to know that.'

The president, whose aides dismiss the whole notion of the 100-day yardstick as the equivalent of a 'Hallmark holiday,' came to office imbued with sky-high expectations from the public and emerged three months later with his approval ratings intact, at a solid 64 per cent in the AP-GfK poll. But it's all been too much for many Republicans: Seven out of 10 now disapprove of his job performance, compared with 58 per cent in February.

And there are still a lot of pages to be written. -- AP