For President Obama, 'so-far, so good'

President Barack Obama aced a choreographed first 100 hours in the White House, dramatically ending the Bush era by scything away at some high-profile domestic and national security policies.

"I think so far, so good," said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.

"He has made a clear break away from the previous administration."

Yet Obama's bold approach cannot disguise the depth of the challenges and yet unseen threats confronting the young president in a restive world beset by plunging economies and simmering insecurity.

Obama's Democratic team seems to have sketched methodical plans to ensure the new president would come across as a man of action from day one.

With the stroke a pen, Obama ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay camp which has stained the US reputation abroad.

With a flourish, Obama banned CIA secret prisons abroad and the use of torture in terror interrogations.

He named two heavy hitting envoys, George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, for the Middle East, and Afghanistan and Pakistan, a sign of robust engagement rarely seen during the Bush administration.

In-depth daily briefing

On the premier crisis, the economy, Obama commissioned an in-depth daily briefing on the savage outlook in the United States and abroad.

He cajoled Congress to act fast on his 800-billion-dollar stimulus plan and lent an ear to Republicans who complained congressional Democrats had locked them out.

Friday, Obama wiped out a key Bush administration social policy, overturning a ban on US funds going to international family planning groups which have links to abortion.

So, a sheaf of campaign promises has been ticked off. But while simple to enact, few of Obama's first steps carry a guarantee of success.

Obama may close Guantanamo but will soon face the choice of what to do with inmates deemed too dangerous to release but impossible to prosecute due to tainted evidence.

He may dispatch envoys to the geopolitical cauldrons in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan, but hopes for progress look slim.

And there is no guarantee that Obama's massive stimulus package will quickly haul the US economy out of its deep malaise - there is already talk of a second plan and a massive extra bailout for the decimated banking industry.

The depth of the economic apocalypse bequeathed by the Bush administration is staggering.

Talismanic software giant Microsoft cut 5,000 jobs on Friday - the most sweeping losses in its history. Another US icon Harley-Davidson dropped another 1,100, as motorcycle sales slump.

US unemployment claims hit a 26-year high and home building fell to half-century lows, on Thursday.

Given such grim news, Obama has no choice politically but to articulate the depth of the crisis, but also knows that restoring tattered US confidence is vital, and that he may be the only source of hope in daunting times.

"If we act as citizens and not partisans and begin again the work of remaking America, then I have faith that we will emerge from this trying time even stronger and more prosperous than we were before," he told Americans in his weekly radio and online address yesterday.

Nation wants him to succeed

So far, polls show that Americans, buoyed by the spectacle of their first black president, and his crusade for change are behind Obama.

A USA Today, Gallup survey found that three-quarters of Americans think the United States will be better off in four years - when Obama will seek reelection - than it is now.

"It doesn't hurt to have the wind at your back, compared to the previous two presidents, there is a clear sense that the nation still wants the president to succeed, whether they voted for him or not," said Scala.

But at some stage, the high hopes and expectations invested in Obama must be redeemed, by progress visible in people's lives, bank accounts and stock-market-related pension funds.

Currently, the new administration is benefiting from a well-run transition which has melded smoothly into the business of governing.

But the new team has still to face its first grave foreign policy crisis - the kind of "3 am" alarm call that now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dramatized in the Democratic primary campaign last year.

So despite a solid first few days, the biggest tests for the nascent Obama administration remain to come.