Domestically, he has primarily accomplished two things: He has succeeded at client politics (i.e. pleased the Democratic base), and he has gotten the federal government to perform demand-side spending (i.e. given things to people). For his efforts, the American people have rewarded him with an approval rating above 60 percent. And Congress has passed a budget resolution that starts to pay for his top priorities.

So far, Obama has been extraordinarily deferential to the legislative branch, drawing only the broadest of outlines and letting powerful liberal committee chairs in the House and centrist committee chairs in the Senate fill in the details. He's tinkered at times, but mostly he's just listened or occasionally cajoled -- acting as a president who respects the balance of power.

As press secretary Robert Gibbs explained to me in an interview, "This White House does not think in one-hundred day increments." The statement is more than a platitude. As senior officials planned Obama's presidency during the transition, they thought through the year in increments of six months, paying only perfunctory attention to the media's artificial 100 day deadline.

In the second 100 days, one administration official told me, Obama may be somewhat less deferential toward congress - at least with respect to certain issues. He may, for example, use the bully pulpit to press for a cap-and-trade emissions credit system, which Congress has so far failed to make the case for: Selling the general idea of energy reform is easy, but pushing through a specific component that would (at least temporarily) hurt Southern and Midwestern oil- and coal-producing states, is more politically contentious.

On health care, Obama expects substantive progress toward a bill in both chambers. The House's measure will likely include a significant expansion of government-run programs; the Senate will probably go in a different direction, coupling a mandate for insurance with expensive government subsidies for those who can't afford it.

"On health care, it's really simple," a senior administration official told me. "As long as they move to insurance for all and cost containment," the administration will be happy. This isn't to say that the White House won't involve itself in the debate - it will - but Obama will be content to let Congress make the sausage. Obama wants a bill by the end of the year, and he probably will have one. Officials note that there has been an internal debate about whether to press Congress to include a major, public alternative to private insurance plans as part of health care reform. But what Obama will do is an open question.

While Congress works out details behind the scenes, the White House will use the opportunity to set the overall agenda - taking advantage of what incoming communications director Anita Dunn calls a "strategic window" in which the administration can define "where we are going" and "why we are going." As an example, Dunn and several White House officials pointed to Obama's April 14 speech at Georgetown, where he clearly and thoroughly explained how the administration is responding to the economic crisis. He used the engagement as an opportunity to make the case that the recovery plan, which is aimed at saving the banks and easing credit, is the first step in building a new economy based not "on a pile of sand," but on "solid rock."

And what about comprehensive immigration reform - a relatively new priority for Obama? Officials concede that Congress isn't likely to move very quickly, and that the public show of presidential support for the idea was based on the need to make sure that Hispanics - an important part of Obama's political coalition - feel they are tended to. (One can make the same point about organized labor. Though labor's main legislative priority, "card check" elections, isn't viable at the moment, the Obama administration hopes that by endorsing and empowering unions to influence the health care debate in Congress, the type of base unrest that has flummoxed previous presidents can be avoided.)

In the realm of foreign affairs, Black Swans reign: Who would have predicted the ascendance of piracy as a major issue? For now, the administration expects the new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy to keep the president occupied. Many anti-Iraq-war pressure groups and their patrons in the House have already come out and criticized Obama's approval of more troops for Afghanistan. If casualties begin to spike, that opposition could grow - with isolationist Republicans now free to join the cause.

Looming over everything, of course, is the economy. The unknown unknowns stagger. Will the administration ask Congress for more bailout money for lending institutions? Will GM's bankruptcy be expensive? Will economic indicators begin to improve but unemployment continue to expand? How receptive will Congress be to Obama's aggressive financial regulation policy, which would - could - grant strong new enforcement and oversight powers to the administration at Congress's expense?

Meanwhile, disappointed by having been locked out by the House GOP, the administration continues to pursue its political goals. "We need to find a different way to define bipartisanship in a way that isn't measured by the number of Republican votes we get," one of the administration's top officials commented. "We also need to be more consistent with how we present our case to the American people. We've lost some arguments we shouldn't have." The official was referring to the president's stimulus package, which quickly became a partisan football after the White House yielded the salesmanship to Congress. That, the official said, won't happen again.

January 21, Presidential Records (13489)
Revokes section of a Bush-era E.O. (13233, 11/1/01) regarding the assertion of executive privilege by current and former presidents. Establishes clearer procedures for claims of executive privilege.

January 21, Ethics Commitments By Executive Branch Personnel (13490)
Creates "Ethics Pledge" for executive employment. Bans lobbyists who have worked in a certain sector from beginning White House work in that field for at least two years.

January 22, Ensuring Lawful Interrogations (13491)
Establishes the Military Field Manual as the governing document for the interrogation of prisoners across all federal agencies. Reaffirms U.S. commitment to the Geneva Conventions, anti-torture treaties, and statutory requirements of U.S. law regarding prisoner treatment. Revokes Bush-era E.O. (13440, 7/20/07), which gave the president leeway in determining requirements of Geneva Conventions, and which had helped shield CIA interrogation methods.

January 22, Closure Of Guantanamo Detention Facilities (13492)
Affirms Geneva Conventions and the right of habeas corpus for those currently detained at Guantanamo Bay. Orders closure of the base within one year's time and a full review of each individual prisoner currently being held, along with the options for trial, release, or further detention.

January 22, Review of Detention Policy Options (13493)
Creates interagency taskforce to determine best way of trying, releasing, or detaining those captured during armed conflict and counter-terrorism operations. The taskforce is given 180 days to produce a comprehensive review of detention policy.

January 30, Economy in Government Contracting (13494)
Orders directs federal agencies to remain neutral in management-labor disputes related to government contracting, and gives guidelines for how such disputes figure into federal expenditures.

January 30, Non-Displacement of Qualified Workers Under Service Contracts (13495)
Creates right of first refusal for federal service contract employees in cases where a new employer is taking over a contract for the same service.

January 30, Notification of Employee Rights Under Federal Labor Laws (13496)
Requires federal contractors to post notifications of employee rights to collective bargaining and association under federal law.

January 30, Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Regulatory Planning And Review (13497)
Rescinds two Bush-era E.O.'s (13258, 2/26/02; 13422, 1/18/07) about regulatory oversight and the concentration of agency rulemaking in the White House.

February 5, Amendments to Executive Order 13199 and Establishment of the President's Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (13498)
Reaffirms the Bush-era E.O. creating an office of Faith-Based Initiatives, while rearticulating new regulations and constitutional guidelines and appointing an advisory council to oversee implementation.

February 5, Further Amendments to Executive Order 12835, Establishment of the National Economic Council (13499)
Amends a Clinton-era E.O., adding several members to the National Economic Council.

February 5, Further Amendments To Executive Order 12859, Establishment of The Domestic Policy Council (13500)
Amends a Clinton-era E.O., changing and eliminating several positions on the Domestic Policy Council and updating them with federal agencies of more recent vintage (DHS, for example).

February 6, Establishing the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (13501)
Creates an advisory board of distinguished economists inside the Treasury Department to give the president periodic advice on the banking and financial systems.

February 6, Use of Project Labor Agreements for Federal Construction Projects (13502)
Directs federal policy to use "project labor" or pre-agreed labor terms for the efficient production of large-scale federal construction projects.

February 19, Establishing the White House Office of Urban Affairs (13503)
Creates an interagency "urban affairs" office, with the goal of better coordinating federal programs and grants that serve urban areas.

February 20, Amending Bush Executive Order 13390 (13504)
Extends Katrina reconstruction order issued by Bush, by reauthorizing coordinator of federal relief.

March 9, Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells (13505)
Revokes Bush E.O. 13435 (June 20, 2007), lifting restrictions on the NIH's ability to conduct stem cell research.

March 11, Creating the White House Council on Women and Girls (13506)
Creates interagency commission to examine remaining inequalities between men and women in the work force, and to coordinate a federal response where possible.

April 8, Establishing the White House Office of Health Reform (13507)
Creates new White House-level office in tandem with new HHS Office of Healthcare Reform.

For the last century or so, the government's approach to energy, especially electricity, has been to encourage its production as plentifully and cheaply as possible. This has been achieved mainly by burning fossil fuels, which, as we all now know, has created a wee problem in the form of massive carbon emissions that are heating up the planet and threatening catastrophe. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to move the United States to a greener economy (thereby vastly reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions), and in so doing, serve as an example to developing countries like China and India which, along with the United States, are the world's major carbon emitters.

Like so much else, Obama's energy plan has been overshadowed by the financial crisis. That has affected the sales pitch-though not the substance-of what he's attempting to do. Obama's plan can be thought of as having three major components: the federal energy incentives, the energy bill that Congress will tackle this summer, and the carbon cap-and-trade system featured in his budget and in legislation recently introduced by House Energy & Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman.

Obama cannily used the stimulus to push through the first part of his plan. Though it was sold as a "jobs" package to goose the economy, it was also a massive down payment on his energy agenda, since it included $38 billion in grants and $127 billion in loan guarantees to support "clean" technology. With all the billions and trillions Washington is allotting to this or that ailing bank or insurance company these days, it's important to have some perspective on how big a figure $38 billion really is when you're talking about energy. According to a recent study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, between 1950 and 2006, the government disbursed about $725 billion in federal energy incentives, mostly to oil, coal and gas. Renewables like wind and solar received only $45 billion. Give or take a few billion, Obama had matched that by Day 29 of his administration.

Of course, spending money is the easy part. Hereafter, things will get a lot harder. The energy bill is expected to mandate that a certain percentage of U.S. electricity come from renewable energy sources, which will move things further in the direction Obama is trying to go. Since "renewable portfolio standards," as they're known, are already in place in more than 30 states, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to expect that a Democratic Congress will pass some form of them. Whether or not the standards will have a significant effect will depend on how aggressive they are.

Passing a cap-and-trade program, on the other hand, will be a much tougher sell, since putting a price on carbon raises the cost of fossil fuels and threatens jobs in politically powerful oil- and coal-producing states. What's more, the nation's largest industry, electric utilities, relies heavily on coal and is not thrilled at the prospect of having to pay (and pass along to customers) what amounts to a tax on carbon emissions. In recent years, the utilities have paid lobbyists more than $20 million annually and are going to set them to the task of thwarting Obama.
To pressure Congress to act, Obama's EPA recently ruled that carbon dioxide is hazardous and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. That will help. But what makes this such a hard fight for Obama and his congressional allies is that energy issues tend to be regional, rather than inter-party, fights, which mitigates the advantage of having large Democratic majorities. In fact, the fight two decades ago to pass the Clean Air Act amendments (which included a cap-and-trade system for the sulfur emissions that cause acid rain) is a good indicator of where the battle lines will be drawn. Then, as now, Midwestern Democrats were the main impediments. The environmentalists eventually prevailed-but it took them a decade.

If Obama can pull off all three components of his plan-and that's an awfully big "if"-he'll have gone a long way toward radically redirecting U.S. energy policy in a way that could end up being pivotal. The administration's hope is that when historians (or Al Gore XIII) look back many decades from now, they'll identify the early Obama years as the point at which the United States changed its energy policy and put the country, and maybe the world, on a better course. Looking back at the last hundred days, the verdict is "one down, two to go."

Tom Daschle crashes. Bill Richardson flames out. Judd Gregg withdraws. Based on the headlines, you might imagine Obama's record for making appointments is a dismal failure. In fact, when it comes to filling key jobs, Obama is on track with his recent predecessors.

With 66 nominees confirmed by the Senate, Obama is well ahead of Clinton's famously distracted first 100 days. But he's behind the energetic Reagan, who holds the record for most nominations approved by April 29th. --Chris Van Buren

Sources: White House Transition Project; Washington Post; The Politics of Presidential Appointments; Library of Congress;Memo on Comparative Statistics of Presidential Appointments, White House Executive Clerk

As a candidate, Obama promised to drag the presidency into the 21st century. Twitter, blogs, and YouTube videos would be the new tools of presidential communication.

Shifting White House strategy is one thing. Changing consumer habits is another. Our sample of the most and least viewed White House videos suggests that Americans may be too busy watching funny clips about funny animals to give their undivided web attention to the President. After garnering a huge audience for his Inaugural address, Obama's internet viewership has plummeted. Now, the weekly addresses fluctuate between 100,000 and 250,000 views. That's not nothing, but it's hardly blockbuster by YouTube standards.

The White House can read the ratings as well as anyone. A recently posted video of the Obama family dog had six times as many hits as Obama's major policy speech on Iraq. In the next hundred days, watch out for some well-timed White House kittens. --Chris Van Buren

It's probably no exaggeration to say that Obama's presidency will ultimately stand or fall on its handling of the financial crisis. And at this point, with respect to all the frantic activity, the polls seem to be saying, so far, so good. Even though a recent New York Times/CBS survey suggests that Americans don't expect the country to be out of recession by the end of his first term, Obama's approval ratings are in the mid-sixties.

Of course, Jimmy Carter's early approval ratings hit 70% before beginning their long downward slide. And Bush's ranged as high as 95% after 9/11. As the Wall Street prospectuses all say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Still, Obama's performance thus far ought to offer some clue: has he set the stage for economic victory, or defeat? In some sense, for all its exertions, the Obama administration hasn't actually done all that much.

There is, to be sure, the stimulus. It is indeed large, filled with scores of spending plans, alleged to be "temporary." Like the recently discontinued tax on telephone service -- originally enacted to fund the Spanish-American War -- many of these programs will undoubtedly be with us for decades to come. As of now, however, most of the stimulus money remains to be spent.

Yet while the stimulus package will provide some modest boost to aggregate demand, it in no way addresses the central problems the Obama administration faces. The Medicare and Social Security systems are about to start draining the budget, rather than contributing to it. The "stress tests" are starting to tell us what we already knew: Large parts of the banking sector need more capital, which won't be easy to raise in the current economic environment. The recession, and especially the decline of Wall Street, is badly undercutting Federal tax revenues. All of these problems are just revealing themselves. And they will get worse before they get better.

So far, Obama's only proposal for dealing with the funding shortage is a tax increase on high earners, leaving "95% of working families" untouched. But the math doesn't work. In 2006, the latest year for which data are available, the top 5% of families took home a whopping 36% of national taxable income, and paid 20% of that, or around $600 billion, in Federal income tax. But even before the president's ambitious health care plan emerges from the Congressional policy grinder, the CBO estimates that his budget plans to spend an additional $400 billion each year. He's not going to get there with a small, or even a large, tax increase on high earners. For one thing, the share of national income collected by the top 5% has undoubtedly dropped sharply since 2006, because their incomes tend to depend more on capital and business income, and on bonuses, all of which have fallen off. (That's why tax revenues fell off so steeply in 2001.) And work by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez suggests that the deeper the crisis, the longer and deeper the hit to top incomes: the lessening of the gap between rich and poor during the fifties and sixties may in fact have been largely attributable to the deleterious effects of the Great Depression and World War II.

Even if this weren't the case, it's not really feasible to pay for everything simply by doubling taxes on the wealthy -- because federal income taxes aren't the only taxes they pay. Higher incomes are disproportionately concentrated in places with high state and local taxes, like New York City. There's a practical limit to how high a percentage of income you can take from even the wealthiest financier, not least because they have more discretion about how, and whether, they make money, which means that raising taxes above a certain level rapidly starts depressing the amount of income available to tax. Even most European countries don't try to pay for their welfare states just by soaking the rich.

Up until now, Obama has largely done the fun part of governing: promising people free stuff. To be sure, even some of that is fairly unpopular, but the auto bailouts have undoubtedly pleased the UAW more than they have angered the rest of the population, and most of the bank spending has occurred under programs originated in the Bush administration. Now, however, the bill for Obama's central proposals is about to come due. Unless Obama thinks he can borrow something like a trillion dollars a year indefinitely, he is going to have to ask Americans to make sacrifices to pay for the goodies.

And the taxes needed to pay for the new programs are not the only costs he will ask us to bear. Like most as yet unimplemented programs theoretically designed to make the world a better place, a cap-and-trade regime for reducing carbon emissions polls well. But when Americans actually have to start paying more for gas, electricity, and heating oil, they will not be so enthusiastic -- especially if their budgets are still shrinking. And if health care is not to carry a shocking price tag, it will have to achieve some sort of savings through rationing: drug makers simply don't make enough in profits to foot the entire bill through lower pharmaceutical prices. Richard Epstein has argued convincingly that ClintonCare foundered because most American voters have health insurance they are satisfied with. In theory, they support a government health care program--but when they are confronted by the details of how their health care will change, that support evaporates.

Neither Obama's legacy, nor the economy's performance, will be much affected by what has happened in these early days. The real test for both will be how he handles the tough choices ahead.

From the perspective of most outsiders, Obama is of course a success, simply because he is not the reviled George W. Bush. (I say this even though my current home, China, is one of three or four places where most people would have been happy to bring Bush back for a third term. Others: Albania, plus probably Poland and Israel.) And he is of course a failure, simply because he is not the Messiah-like FDR/Lincoln hybrid that many Europeans and others had begun to envision by Election Day. And of course, no one knows how Americans or anyone else will feel about him two years from now -- or four, or eight. We love the "100 Days" marker, but things that prove to matter about a presidency usually don't show up this soon.

Still, as I've checked news sites and watched TV reports from around the world, I've been struck by the cumulating success of the Obama launch. Here are the moments that I think have mattered outside the United States even more than they did inside. The list starts with the one I consider most important and works down, but you could put them in pretty much any order you want. The point about them collectively is the emerging message they send about the way this president views America's place in the world.

1. April 5 (or, in 100 Days mode, Day 76 of the Obama presidency, counting January 20 as Day 1.) Obama's speech in Prague about eliminating nuclear weapons (official text here). From an international perspective, this speech was a counterpart to Obama's post-Rev. Wright, campaign-saving address on race relations, in Philadelphia, a little more than a year ago. That is, it addressed a question of first-order seriousness - in this case, what is to become of the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads still around - and handled it with both clarity and complexity. He also showed that it was possible to talk seriously about terrorist threats without fear-mongering. This line was noted around the world (friends in Japan sent me messages about it within minutes): "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act." Obama said that without guilt, apology, or suggestion that Harry Truman's decision to bomb Japan had been wrong, but nonetheless as a historical truth to be recognized. A speech worthy of the great post-World War II American statesmen.

2. April 4 (Day 75). Obama's answer at a press conference in Strasbourg about whether he believed in "American exceptionalism." The minor point here was about performance-dexterity. At a time when the right-wing press in America was insisting that Obama could not complete a sentence without teleprompter help, he met an essay-question type challenge with an impromptu response that would be hard to improve on even with long, careful effort. (YouTube here.) The major point was, again, the seriousness of his reply. Is America exceptional? The entire world knows it is. Its influence, its wealth, its military power, the very fact that someone like Obama could become its president. But to have an American president explain that "exceptional" does not mean "unaccountable," that he can love his country while admiring others - this has an effect. It was an answer that Americans could be proud of and foreigners could respect.

3. April 2 (Day 73 -- it was a good week). In London, Obama's role as counselor/arbitrator between Nicolas Sarkozy and Hu Jintao. As first described, this seemed a "too good to check" anecdote, or a chestnut from some potboiler Washington novel: the leaders of two major countries getting angrier and angrier at each other over a negotiating detail, until the American president takes them each aside, urges them to calm down, and comes up with a compromise term both can accept. On further reporting, the story seems to have held up. Here's why it matters: not for what it shows about the leaders of China and France, or the detail they were arguing over, but what it showed about a new American president's comfort in this milieu. Five months into his presidency, John F. Kennedy had seemed rattled and nervous in his first meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. This is a better way to make a debut.

4. April 14 (Day 85 - and passim, Days 1- 100). April 14 is when Obama gave his address on economic policy at Georgetown University, the most comprehensive and thought-through explanation of how he was trying to deal with the world economic meltdown. (Official text here.) Inside America, people blame bankers, or sub-prime borrowers, or Alan Greenspan, or Bernard Madoff, or who have you for the economic disaster. The rest of the world blames America. No one knows how Obama's rescue plans, in their changing variety, will work. The Administration's presentation of them has not always been smooth, especially when that presentation has come from Secretary Geithner. But the mood around the world would be a lot darker without the sense that at least Obama himself has an idea of how the plan fits -- that he can explain the long-term goal. If it really doesn't work, then today's calmness will seem like complacency. But that's not for these first 100 days.

5. March 19 (Day 59), Obama's taped Persian New Year greeting to the public of Iran. (YouTube here.) This was in the same category as his lifting of restrictions on family contacts with Cuba (April 13, Day 84) and his handshake with Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas (April 18, Day 89). Gestures like these do nothing - directly - to resolve the genuinely difficult issues with the respective countries, most difficult of all with Iran. (The change in the Cuba rules at least helped many families, plus indicating future movement away from the most out-of-touch-with-reality aspect of U.S. foreign policy.) But they cost very little, and they indirectly position the U.S. better for the long game of winning respect and support. Obama has figured out something everyone outside the country knows: America looks both more powerful and more attractive when it seems confidently at ease, not thin-skinned or cocky.

6. January 22 (Day 3). Obama's executive orders outlawing torture, starting to close Guantanamo, etc. If he had not done these things, that omission would be number one on the "what the world doesn't like" list. I've placed his signing of the orders down here because, from an outside perspective, it is an "of course" consequence of his election. The sorting-out of responsibility for the era of torture is not a first-order international issue ... yet. If the U.S. does not soon establish a "Truth Commission" or similar body, that will change.

7. January 21 (Day 2). Obama's meeting at the White House with Gen. Petraeus, Adm. Mullen, Sec. Gates, et al to draw up plans for Afghanistan and (leaving) Iraq. This mattered for showing that he was still serious about these issues, even thought his hair was on fire dealing with the economy. If Afghanistan turns into a morass for the United States - the main foreign fear about his policy so far - a sequel to The Best and the Brightest will no doubt begin with this meeting.

8. February 20 (Day 32). Hillary Clinton visits China. As Senator, Hillary Clinton had been China's candidate during the Democratic primaries. (They knew her and liked her husband; they had no idea who Obama was.) But Chinese officialdom feared that as Secretary of State she'd mainly be lecturing them about trade surpluses and Tibet. When she got to Beijing, she said that China and America disagreed about serious issues, and both sides knew it - but that at the moment they had a financial/economic emergency to deal with, and right behind it serious environmental work to do. Some Americans called this kowtowing, which to me seemed a huge misreading. It was recognition of reality: any global economic or environmental proposal that doesn't involve China is a joke. Thousands of miles from the DC gossip, I don't know whether Hillary Clinton is seen as a faultlessly loyal Secretary of State. From out here, on the receiving end, that's how she looks - which is good for her, good for Obama, and good for the United States.

9. April 2 (Day 73). Michelle Obama sits with schoolgirls in London and tells the mainly non-white students that they should dream their biggest dreams - and meanwhile study very hard. I assume this played well in the U.S. You can't imagine how well it played outside.

Because a ten-point list seems too pat, I'll stop here - though there are some other candidates. (January 12, Day -12. Pre-inauguration meeting with the President of Mexico, a sign of respect. Or, April 6, Day 77: Speech to the Turkish parliament including the line, "Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject." This is not higher up in the list mainly because George W. Bush said similar things.)

People who oppose Obama in the U.S. could surely come up with a list of things they don't like, but I'm not talking about the internal American debate. I bet they couldn't produce a very long list of decisions and signals that had played poorly in the rest of the world. A strong start doesn't guarantee anything. But it's better than the alternative.

What has surprised me? Not much. I'm surprised by Michelle Obama's public relations success. I'm surprised by the total refusal of the Republicans to cooperate. I was surprised by the one obvious disastrous decision -- to hype Tim Geithner's first bank plan when he didn't yet have one. Other than that, Obama's first hundred days have seemed as predictable as his disciplined campaign. His instinctive small-c conservatism has led him not to reject the Bush legacy entirely, but to try, wherever he can, to make it work. Hence his attempt to rescue the fast-collapsing war in Afghanstan, and his postponement of real withdrawal from Iraq until next year. I worry that both decisions are the wrong ones -- that Afghanistan is hopeless and Pakistan worse; and that the lull in Iraq is the eye of a storm -- the one time when U.S. withdrawal might be feasible. But Obama's caution leads him in a less radical direction. And we will find out in time whether caution was merited.

The same might be said for his stimulus package and budget proposal. Both were adequate but not ground-shaking. The stimulus may well secure healthcare reform this year and prevent the recession's bottom from becoming an abyss: Not bad, but not exactly revolutionary. The budget's failure to grapple with long-term debt is equally unsurprising in a demand downdraft -- and it's no deep solution to the fiscal hole either. And since the revenues from cap and trade now look very iffy, and the growth projections for even this year look off by a mile, we're treading water, not forging ahead. In retrospect, deciding not to put the banks into swift receivership - assuming that was legally and politically an option - will probably prove to have been his most important move. Again, I cannot know if this was shrewd strategy or a missed opportunity. But it was a big decision, and Obama opted for the conservative option.

The clearest breaks with the Bush legacy have been, as expected, in foreign policy -- and all of them welcome. There have been no sudden moves, but a real and profound shift in America's attitude to the rest of the world. There is engagement and diplomacy, not grandstanding and war. The way Obama defused Chavez by actually shaking his hand was very deft. The outreach to the Iranian people through the media has helped scramble the Iranian elections and put more pressure on Ahmadinejad than Cheney ever could. The European tour was criticized for being short on substantive concessions, but I think that misses the point. Obama is laying a new groundwork for future action. The test will be how he grapples with Iraq withdrawal, and with Israel's determination to provoke an armed conflict with Iran. And neither challenge will be easy.

Has he said "goodbye to all that" with respect to the culture war, as I hoped a year and a half ago? I'd say an emphatic Yes. While the Republicans have responded to his emergence in ways that entrench their commitment to ideology and the red-blue split, Obama has somehow managed not to press the buttons they want. Americans greeted the "socialist" moniker by ramping up their disapproval of Republicans, not Obama. They see the merits of the stimulus package -- and even the kinder, gentler approach to resuscitating the banking sector -- along the same pragmatic lines Obama does. Moreover, without Obama, it's hard to see any administration, Democratic or Republican, being able to rescue the financial sector while managing the gales of populist anger out there.

The trust people still have in him is real. And he has tended to it well. His obvious reluctance to initiate criminal prosecutions for the war crimes of the Bush-Cheney era speaks to this desire to be president of all Americans and to avoid divisive and damaging battles. But the rule of law remains. It's hard to see how Holder can resist proscuting obvious violations of the law on torture and mistreatment of prisoners. Nonetheless, Obama has shown he understands his office: to preside, not to prosecute.

My sense is that this is a subtle and auspicious start. He has built trust; he has restored a tone of responsibility; he has shown a new American face to the world; he has ended the torture program; although it may not be enough, he has done the minimum necessary to prevent a truly epochal depression; he has put science before ideology; and he has demonstrated outreach to his opponents. And he has done it with a real degree of grace and eloquence and sincerity that have rendered him more personally popular today than ever before.

We have an adult in charge. And we have civil public reasoning back in a persuasive president. Even with the fetid and somewhat desperate attempts of the far right to bring him down so soon, he dominates the stage right now. Because Obama's game is always a long one, a hundred days seems too soon to judge. But the ground has been laid. For what? We'll find out.