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In a series of televised events, Mr. Obama met with State Department officials, White House staff and retired military officers to demonstrate the new president’s first priorities.
The Obama White House is now in its first 100 days, a traditional media measuring stick for a presidency’s effectiveness since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first 100 days in 1933.
Facing a crippled financial system and record-high unemployment in addition to two wars, the way President Obama deals with these problems could be a measure of his effectiveness.
Reversing Bush
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Guantanamo Bay became a symbol for the Bush administrations controversial anti-terror policies. |
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On his second full day as president, Barack Obama signed several executive orders that reversed the Bush administration’s most controversial anti-terrorism policies.
He signed an executive order telling the military to close the military prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year, and suspend military trials for detainees.
“These have been very troubled tribunals, where they were designed solely for the Guantanamo detainees and have been troubled right from the very start. There's been an enormous amount of criticism,” National Public Radio correspondent Jackie Northam told the NewsHour.
Mr. Obama also said that all interrogations of prisoners would follow Army guidelines that prohibited torture. The Bush administration had authorized “harsh interrogation,” which critics called torture.
Focus on Diplomacy
Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden also appeared at the State Department with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to announce the appointment of two special envoys to the Middle East and to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
Secretary Clinton said that President Obama would stress diplomacy and development over military force to advance American interests around the world.
Stimulus Plan
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The Obama administration wants Congress to pass a massive stimulus package as companies like Microsoft lay off thousands of employees in a bad economy. |
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One of Mr. Obama’s biggest priorities for his first 100 days is the passage of a massive stimulus plan designed to help the troubled American economy come back to life.
The plan, called the American Recovery and Reinvestment act, will pump $825 billion into the U.S. economy if passed. Mr. Obama’s team has said it will create more than 3 million new jobs.
Congress is in charge of writing and finalizing the law, but Republicans in Congress have some objections – namely that the plan does not include enough tax cuts. In a meeting at the White House on January 23, Mr. Obama said he recognizes their concerns but wants a bill ready to be signed by February 16.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, said that her party would work to include Republicans despite the fact that the GOP are the minority party in Congress.
“Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election. But that doesn't mean we don't want it to have sustainability and bipartisan support, and the president is working hard to get that done, Pelosi said, according to USA Today.
High-Tech White House
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The new whitehouse.gov site aims to help citizens better interact with their government, administration officials say. |
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And at 12:01 pm January 20, the very second Barack Obama became president, his team unveiled a brand new version of whitehouse.gov, which will be used to improve communication, transparency and participation with American citizens.
However, the web team was unable to update the site on January 21, encountering numerous technical glitches and outdated equipment once they actually set up shop at the White House.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama won a battle to keep his personal BlackBerry e-mail device. The government has outfitted it with technology that will keep his e-mails protected from hackers, although his personal messages could become public under open government laws.
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This [teen] is an immigrant from Mexico, and he works long hours at a local farm milking dairy cows, five hours per milking, twice a day.
