Foreign policy: Thicker velvet on the glove but more iron on the fist. He's breaking the hearts of all the people who thought he was going to liquidate the war against jihadist Islam regardless of consequence. Unlike Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, who bullied and overrode the national security apparat, he appears to be listening to what the spooks and soldiers have to tell him. He's determined not to be beaten or appear to be beaten.

Economics: Like FDR, he's fundamentally a conservative who wants to preserve and repair the financial system by saving it both from its own worst excesses and from popular anger and resentment. A pruner, not a logger.

JACK.... My guess is you attended public school which no longer teaches history.FDR made a bad recession a depression that lasted a decade. Our pres is following in his footsteps.

Gee, I don't recall that the schools ever taught that FDR extended the Depression and I first went to school in 1958.

Maybe you should stop getting your history from Fox Bozo News.

What ckone is repeating is the Friedmanite orthodoxy. You'd never convince any of my parents' generation who lived through the Depression that it is correct.

"You'd never convince any of my parents' generation who lived through the Depression that it is correct. "

Absolutely. That has something to do with the fact that Hoover's do-nothing approach wasn't getting anything acomplished but a lot of Hooverville shanty towns that started springing up outside of every city. They saw that with their own eyes, just as they saw them shrink under FDR.

It's easy for those that didn't live through it or see it for themselves to re-write history to reflect what they want to believe, that FDR was some kind of failure because he was a Democrat.

FDR's policies may have extended the depression or maybe not. But, in any basic macroeconomics course you will learn that WW2 ended the depression, not FDR!

Excellent take, Jack. It's why I, as a conservative, could so enthusiastically vote for him. I could tell 10 miles away that it was his own personal, steady demeanor which would keep him from being the rabid lefty defeatist socialist he was being caricaturized as by the right.

I do hope at some point he will, when necessary, stick his neck out, take a stand and fight for it. That is ultimately the very essence of a leader, someone who doesn't need to be liked. He will be challenged, probably out of the blue, and he will need to be ready to lead and create support for his stand rather than just collect existing support.

What you'll also learn is that the war brought about pump priming expenditure at the required level. New Deal budgets ran about $7-$9 billion per year. Wartime budgets were well over $40 billion per year.

The result, when coupled with progressive taxation, unionization, and the de facto protected domestic market, was to move the white working class up into the middle class, where it stayed for almost 30 years after 1945 and whence it has been falling slowly out since the mid-70s.

There's an interesting figure in Frederick Lewis Allen's The Big Change (1952), a look back at the first 50 years of the 20th century by a mildly conservative social historian. He quotes the Brookings Institution that in 1929 60% of US households had incomes at or below the poverty level. That's why the boom of the 20s was unsustainable and why the loss of upper and middle class wealth in the post-Crash deflation so badly hurt the fundamental economy. FDR's policies changed that distribution of income, and they made the America of the post-War boom.

Ultimately, I was hoping for a president that would respect our Constitution and respect it's laws. As Obama is very educated in Constitutional Law I thought that perhaps he would be a strong defender of the Constitution rather than someone who knew how to manipulate it for his own purposes. Our borders are well defined and laws exist to defend and respect those borders. Mr. Obama seems to have no intention of defending our borders from those who would choose to ignore them or defend the laws that make outlaws out of illegal immigrants and outlaws of those who would hire those illegal immigrants.

It is quite interesting that Mr Obama is still defending himself in court against claims that he is not an American Citizen, but in order to read any of these news reports one must seek those reports out. It is the most under reported news story in the USA. While he may have a perfectly good excuse for continuing to keep his birth records, and college records sealed from public view, it begs the question of what he might be hiding. Personally, I'm willing to wait until all the records are unsealed before making any personal judgment. No one can say for sure what his status is without having all the information and none of us have all the information. If Mr Obama indeed has nothing to hide, then why do those records remain sealed?

Obama is the candidate of the credentialed meritocracy, the people who I call the mandarin class. These folks believe that their educations give them the right to rule, and that not merely their knowledge and judgment but their morality is superior to that of the general run of Americans. The media (other than GOP partisans) have fallen all over themselves for him because they are of that class and identify with him. Obama respects education, he respects expertise, and he has shown himself in both foreign and domestic affairs to be a man who listens to the experts who expound the higher conventional wisdom of making things work. At the same time, he has the charisma and communications skill to successfully sell the doings of this class to the mass of the population who lack a college education.

He's different than FDR in that he's a meritocrat himself rather than a WASP patrician. But he serves the same function. The mandarins are unpopular with the general population. Like a geeky kid in middle school, they need to earn the protection of a big, strong popular guy by doing his homework. That's what Bush did for the neocons, and it is what Obama is doing for the mildly progressive, mildly ameliorationist upper middle class who are all in favor of helping the less well off as long as reform leaves them pretty much where they are. If it lowers the prestige of those who have the kind of real money mere doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors never see, so much the better.

Are you living in America? Obama a Conservative? What are you smoking? The new President has tried to undue the Constitution and remake the the role of the federal government in his first 100 days. FDR was an economic idiot only out done by B. Obama.

I agree with your take on Obama and his class. I don't mind it, however. I'm very tired of presidents and administrations telling us how "regular" they are. I don't want Regular. I want Superior and Excellent and Hyper-Competent.

I also agree that Obama is a mild-lefty "progressive," who is not going to do anything too dangerous to the statuus quo. This is going to actually thrill the upper class left: they stay cozy and still get to bitch about disparities in wealth and power. Obama lets them have it all.

He likes it hot??

That hostage nearly got killed at sea because the Big O didn't want to shoot. Word has it there was also almost a coo in order to take the shot.

When the hostage dove into the water, they had clear shots on all and were ordered to stand down.

He also doesn't repect the constitution and he's a Kenyian. This has been the biggest sham ever in the election of a President.

There is an old proverb that fits Obama well ,"He who carves himself to fit all men soon whittles himself away". In the final analysis Obama will be found to be a follower not a leader, he is only a puppet beholden to the people who bought him his seat in the circus, and when civil unrest increases to an alarming rate, the general population will begin to despise all things government and outright revolt spills into the streets, the press and his handlers will turn and devour him and bring in fresh meat and reset the table. a word to the wise if there be any left out there, "the words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools".eccl. 9:17

Greetings to all,

In my personal opinion I believe there are Americans out there who are in denial. President Obama has inherited allot of negative baggage and should be given the opportunity to back up change. Due to past history and the very foundation in which the United States was established, one can merely reflect on barbaric treatments and techniques performed when building this country on the backs, blood, sweat and tears of others. All good things must come to an end, get over it and allow our intelligent, charismatic, yet non-violent President Barak Obama perform his presidential duties.

God Bless