Great (or Unrealistic) Expectations

My goodness ... Barack Obama has been president for nearly 100 days and he has not managed to solve all the problems left behind by the Bush administration. There must be something wrong with him, or with "liberal" policies -- at least that's what Jackson Diehl at the Washington Post seems to think.

New American presidents typically begin by behaving as if most of the world's problems are the fault of their predecessors -- and Barack Obama has been no exception. In his first three months he has quickly taken steps to correct the errors in George W. Bush's foreign policy, as seen by Democrats. He has collected easy dividends from his base, U.S. allies in Europe and a global following for not being "unilateralist" or war-mongering or scornful of dialogue with enemies.

Now comes the interesting part: when it starts to become evident that Bush did not create rogue states, terrorist movements, Middle Eastern blood feuds or Russian belligerence -- and that shake-ups in U.S. diplomacy, however enlightened, might not have much impact on them. [...]

Obama is not the first president to discover that facile changes in U.S. policy don't crack long-standing problems. Some of his new strategies may produce results with time. Yet the real test of an administration is what it does once it realizes that the quick fixes aren't working -- that, say, North Korea and Iran have no intention of giving up their nuclear programs, with or without dialogue, while Russia remains determined to restore its dominion over Georgia. In other words, what happens when it's no longer George W. Bush's fault? That's what the next 100 days will tell.

Come on Diehl, we didn't get into this mess overnight. And until the economy is fixed, and our troops are out of Iraq, it IS the fault of George W. Bush. He took a great economy, and a world pretty much at peace, and turned it all upside down.

Is it reasonable to expect President Obama to "fix" the Bush mess in less than 100 days? No.