REPLIES TO THE CURRENT QUESTION

Our question last week was:

Give us your assessment of Barack Obama as he's about to be inaugurated, based on his performance during the transition.

Here are your answers.  The name of a writer is included only if he or she actually placed a name at the end of the message.  Otherwise, we assume the writer wished anonymity and "name withheld" is inserted.

C+, Keep up the good work, as my old professors used to say.  Everyone knows by now that Ex-Senator/President Elect Obama was President/Editor of the Harvard Law Review but no one knows if he did a good job.  If recent performance is an indicator he was probably busy running for Dean of the Law School or University President his whole time in the position.  My point here is the answer to the current question.  During the transition, it looks like Obama has still been running for something.  He has been doing it unabatedly his entire life to this point.  It is possible that he doesn't realize that he is there now and can stop running and start performing.  A disconcerting thought on his transition is that he may have running and performing mixed up in his mind and may believe that by being elected he has performed.  If that's the case, Jimmy Carter can look forward to being only the second worst President of all time.

Don Newell

Overall grade - B minus.  

Reasonable cabinet picks for Treasury, Defense and State. HRC was probably the best he could do given the stable mates available.  At least he didn't pick Kerry. BRR! For these he gets a B+.  The vetting process has been abysmal.  You'd think after two years of campaigning and, especially, with Rahm Emanuel running the show, they would know how to vet appointments.

Richardson and Holder are clearly Fs.  The Surgeon General is a joke, but then again, it has been that way ever since C. Everett Koop.  The EPA appointment is scary, but he has to give a sop to the left on this one.  Too bad, it will be the cause of so much economic ruin - rating D+.

For staying out of foreign policy decisions let's give him the A- he deserves.  I would have given him the full A but for his reflexive, boilerplate "evenhandedness" statements regarding the Gaza war. If this is a signal of where his policy toward Israel is headed, previous statements about their right to self-defense not withstanding, then his grade drops to C- on principle.  

He has gotten snookered on the Blajo/Burris brouhaha.  But, so has the entire Democratic caucus.  Live by racial politics die by racial politics. Luckily, all new administrations come in with a bucket of good will.  We all want our presidents to succeed...I think.  BHO is going to need it.  His press conferences so far have been marked by a stuttering hesitancy characteristic of BHO when he needs to speak extemporaneously on non-rehearsed sound bites.  Given the fact that the zeitgeist seems to be for more socialization of our country, we are headed for rough times. And BHO and the Democrats are just the guys to give it to us.

Alan Weick

His running around D.C. singing “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” is in the poorest taste.
 
[Name withheld]