Obama's presidential style is a work in progress
By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — As he entered office, President Barack Obama made a symbolic bow to frugality, putting off the costly redecorating of the Oval Office that his predecessors had done.
But if the furnishings have remained largely the same — right down to the stain on the big oval rug — the way Obama looks and acts there is decidedly different from his predecessor, not to mention all those who went before.
At the 100-day mark, he's putting his own style on the presidency. Opportunistic. Pragmatic. Confident. Deliberate. Polite to friend and foe alike. Partisan. Polarizing. A better talker than George W. Bush. A more disciplined manager than Bill Clinton.
Some traits he'll maintain throughout his presidency. Some could change over his term. John F. Kennedy grew skeptical after a disastrous invasion of Cuba early in his presidency, learning to challenge aides and adopting an executive style that saw him and the country through a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union.
"He's flexible," George Edwards, a scholar of the presidency and currently a visiting fellow at Oxford University, said of Obama. "He's still learning."
Nothing defines his early days as much as the way he's seized the political opportunity provided by economic crisis to push forward an ambitious liberal agenda that otherwise would have little chance of getting through Congress. It includes an explosion of federal spending, the groundwork for universal health care and broad regulation of the environment, and soaring deficits and debt.
Even before he took office, Obama knew he faced a rare moment of crisis — one when a president could push through an agenda dramatically changing the government, and perhaps the country itself.
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