Obama Tally: Day 1 - Off to a Good Start

On this, the first day of the Obama Presidency, we are going to start a new feature here on Political Machine. Every day, we're going to look at the stories that made the headlines in the mainstream media or the blogs, and evaluate whether they represent an advancement for Obama's administration or a setback.

We are not judging whether these stories represent advancements or setbacks for the country, only for what we understand Obama's goals to be.

By no means are we claiming this to be an objective list, and it probably won't be anything close to complete. The goal is to get a top-view sense of whether the news has been basically good for the Obama administration, or bad.

I will be reading the comments regularly. If there is an overwhelming feeling that we missed a major story, it will be added. Similarly, if we interpret a given story as an "advance," when the overwhelming feeling is that it should be a "setback," I will reconsider my evaluation.

A running tally will be maintained here.

The first day was mostly good news for the administration. Clinton was confirmed, Obama got the ball rolling on closing the prison at Guantanamo, and he scored a major PR coup by freezing wages for White House staff making over $100k/year.

The major setback of the day was the delay of Eric Holder's confirmation, which most see as inevitable at this point.

UPDATE: A reader points out two stories I missed. The call to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, and the signing of the ethics rules. I'm cynically lumping in the ethics rules with the pay freeze since the two stories were largely reported together and amount to a single PR victory with no real world impact.

The call to Abbas I really don't really know whether to list as a advance or a setback. My assumption is that his goal is peace, and I do not know how far this call will go towards making that happen. On the plus side, it represents a new foreign policy direction, and given the failures of past policies that cannot be a wholly bad thing. On the negative side, the domestic backlash he will receive for this symbolic gesture is bound to be considerable. I'll call it a wash for now.