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Obama's fateful choice: After a rough first year, he can learn like Kennedy or fail like Carter

By Sean Wilentz

Sunday, January 17th 2010, 4:00 AM

Only a year ago, the buzzword about Barack Obama was "transformational."  Americans had supposedly elected another Lincoln to the White House; no, another FDR, or maybe a liberal Reagan. Nobody's talking that way anymore. Obama's actual achievements so far have been piecemeal at best.

He may be on the brink of signing a health-care reform bill, but it leaves many of his supporters underwhelmed. The economic picture, wrenched by the financial crisis that began in 2008, still looks uncertain, and for the unemployed it looks bleak. The White House has announced a new policy on Afghanistan, but it remains unclear exactly what that policy is, even inside Obama's own Pentagon.

The President himself has conceded that the country "has every right to be deflated" after his first year. Now that his polling numbers have fallen to Earth — from mid-60% approval a year ago to just below 50% approval today — Obama looks less like a political messiah and more a victim of unrealistic expectations raised, in part, by his own personality-focused election campaign.

In his own first year, Lincoln rallied the Union and took the first halting steps toward emancipation. FDR initiated key programs of the New  Deal. Reagan completed the sweeping tax reform that was the cornerstone of his conservative domestic policy. Obama's presidency is taking longer to get on track. Or maybe it was a mistake all along to project wildly about Obama's "transformational" presidency before he had served a single day on the job.

Regardless, his performance ought to be held to a less exalted standard. Setting aside the important racial symbolism, Obama's first year may be most usefully compared with those of two Presidents of the modern era with very different historical standing: John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. Like Obama, Kennedy and Carter were Democrats elected as agents of change after eight years of Republican control of the White House. Like him, they were youthful telegenic favorites of the press corps who promised a break with the tired politics of the past. Although they faced different situations at home and abroad, all three shared certain challenges.

In terms of his accomplishments and achievements, how has Obama fared compared with Kennedy and Carter, both of whom intended to translate bold plans into action — only to run smack into brutal reality?

And, more important, does it look as if the President will go on to succeed from here? Does his first year suggest that he will be like Kennedy, who smartly took responsibility for failures, learned from mistakes and set the stage for a political comeback? Or does Obama's first year suggest that he will follow Carter in never getting a handle on things and having a presidency that ends abysmally?

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