MICHEL MARTIN, host:
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Coming up, why does the U.S. rank 69th in the world on the proportion of women serving in the national legislature's lower house? This week's Washington Post magazine tells us about a program that's trying to change that. We'll tell you more in just a few minutes. But first, we continue our conversations about the first 50 days of the Obama administration with the loyal opposition.
We just heard from the progressives. Now we're joined by two noted conservative voices, Matthew Continetti is an associate editor at The Weekly Standard and Reihan Salam is an associate editor at The Atlantic. They're here with me in Washington, welcome, welcome back.
Mr. MATTHEW CONTINETTI (Associate Editor, The Weekly Standard): Thank you for having us.
Mr. REIHAN SALAM (Associate editor, The Atlantic): Thank you.
MARTIN: Matthew, I'm going to ask you the same first question I asked our progressives. What happened to the first 100 days? What's up with this first 50 days? Is that a fair - is that a fair point to mark?
Mr. CONTINETTI: It's the American obsession with instant gratification. One-hundred days now is too long.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CONTINETTI: So we're stretching it - we're reducing it, rather, to eight weeks.
MARTIN: So, as a conservative you object to that, even though I asked you.
Mr. CONTINETTI: Exactly. I believe in delayed gratification. So we should really have the first 150 days. That should be the benchmark.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: Okay. All right, well, I will take responsibility for being part of the deteriorating culture.
Mr. CONTINETTI: Not a problem.
MARTIN: And if I could just ask you for your assessment of the first 50 days.
Mr. CONTINETTI: Well, I would put it this way. We're eight weeks in, 50 days in, and I think Obama showed he's incredibly personally popular. He achieved his first major objective, which was the stimulus package. Since then, since achieving that objection, I think he's shown himself to be a little bit weaker than we might've expected. I think Republicans have shown themselves to be a little bit better organized than we might've expected.
But I think the overall constellation of politics remains the same, which is you have all the momentum on the Obama side. The question is, can he kind of get through another round of significant legislation? Get his program through, get cap-and-trade through, get the Employee Free Choice Act through, get health care through. And if he can do that this year, I think he'll be on the mark for a successful presidency.
MARTIN: Reihan, is that a fair question that I asked you? And how do you answer my unfair question?
Mr. SALAM: I think it - I actually do think it's a fair question because if you look at Obama's budget, if you look at the stimulus package that Matt described, we are seeing a very clear outline of how Barack Obama intends to govern. On top of that, we also see the tactical political genius of the guy. For example, you know, the Clinton White House would do lots of things like trying to stir up the pot. And you see Barack Obama with the Rush Limbaugh story where the White House and it's surrogates was really pushing this idea of Limbaugh as the leader of Republican Party.
A brilliant idea that led the conservative punditocracy to debate this idea, myself included, for a kind of long period of time, distracting the country from Barack Obama's sweeping policy agenda, which I've got to say is looking less encouraging to me now than it did 50 days ago.
MARTIN: What do you mean?
Mr. SALAM: What I mean is that when you look at the budget, you were seeing down payments on lots of very sharp expansions of government spending. And I think that's legitimate, that's something we can debate, have an honest discussion over. But then you also see little tax changes that are not going to be big enough to pay for a lot of the sharp increase in spending. And then, on top of that, you also see on the financial crisis, you see the Obama White House saying - we're going to do something big, we are just not sure what it is.
Now, in the previous panel, some of your progressive guests were saying, you know, Obama isn't paying enough attention to the fat cats, and fair enough, who wants to pay attention to fat cats, you know, when, you know, real people are hurting economically? Except that it's not just about fat cats, it's about having an environment of certainty.
It's about, you know, even if you make some kind of mistake, as long as you have some sort of consistent approach to the financial crisis, that makes a big, big difference in terms of whether or not we can get the economy moving again. So that really worries me.
MARTIN: Where are you on this question, where is each of you on this question of whether he's trying to do too much too soon? Matt?
Mr. CONTINETTI: Well, I can't blame a guy for trying. I mean, I think he's right to view this economic crisis as an opportunity. Reagan viewed - Reagan saw stagflation as an opportunity to reshape the budget in a more conservative direction to get his marginal tax rate cuts. So it makes sense to me that Obama would view this financial crisis as an opportunity to increase government expenditures in energy, health care and education.
The problem is Reagan's policies, you could argue, were - had something - were related to resolving the economic crisis that helped bring him to power. And I don't think you can make the same argument. I know the White House does make the argument that somehow the health care system, the education system and the energy sector are related to the current economic mess.
When I look at the economic mess, what I see is its root cause is in real estate bubbles, and the securitization of mortgages and an insolvent, possibly, banking sector. The words health care, energy, education, they don't come into mind. So, for me, it remains the top priority of the government to do something about that financial crisis.
And now the fact is the Obama administration kind of owns the bailouts, which we just saw on the past weekend. We see them struggling, Larry Summers, Christina Romer struggling with the idea of hold it - that we are giving this money to AIG. AIG is paying out these bonuses, yet we can't really do anything about it. I think that's going to be another problem for Obama going forward.
MARTIN: Reihan, what's your take on this? And then it has to be said that there are those who argue that the criticism comes from the right because they don't want Obama to succeed programmatically.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: So, of course, they want him to delay and delay and not try to do anything big, because they don't like what he wants to do.
Mr. SALAM: Here's the fundamentally profoundly tough position that we Republicans are in. Our party really did fail on addressing a lot of the long-term crises facing the country's economy. And so now the Republicans are the opposition. They're in a position to offer legitimate criticisms, but they don't have a lot of credibility. You'll see everyone saying this. You'll see Rush Limbaugh saying this. You'll see lots of Republican reformers who want the party to shift to the center saying the exact same thing.
But, you know, like it or not, we have one opposition to President Obama and that's the Republican Party. And I think that, you know, on health care, for example, President Obama is absolutely right to say that the health care crisis contributes to various other problems. But if you don't get the banking sector moving again, then you really can't do these other things. So I actually think that he's very right, and very sophisticated and seeing that all of these problems are interrelated.
But, again, you know, he has Tim Geithner, not exactly the most charismatic guy in the world, out front owning the banking issue. And then he owns pouring money to schools and other things that, you know, we all like. And, you know, I wonder what that says about his level of political courage, and, you know, we're going to need more of that in the future.
And I hope that we see more leadership from him because, you know, unlike some of my fellows, I want him to succeed, because if he doesn't, you know, I'm, you know, kind of a young guy, I want to live in America with a flourishing economy. And I think that (unintelligible).
MARTIN: We kind of like to retire at some point.
Mr. SALAM: Eh, well, that's okay, but…
MARTIN: Maybe have a family.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: Maybe have health insurance, maybe not go bankrupt if you had to go to the hospital.
Mr. SALAM: Not that I wanted a family if President Obama doesn't succeed, but, I mean, you know, geez, it is very, very scary stuff. And talking to my parents, you know, my parents are liberal Democrats, and they were talking about AIG, and they were talking about these guys getting bonuses, that's all they were talking about - the level of anger and frustration that they had.
And right now they're still rooting for President Obama. Will they still be rooting for him if he keeps punting down that key core issue, you know, a couple of months down the road? I don't know.
MARTIN: That's really helpful. That's interesting. I have to ask because I asked the progressives this, do you think race plays a role in how he's being evaluated so far? So much has been made of this historic first. Matthew? Does race still matter?
Mr. CONTINETTI: I actually - I don't think it matters. And I think one of the major missteps of the Obama administration so far was when Eric Holder gave that speech marking African-American history month, where he tried to kind of re-inject race politics into the Democratic administration. And I think most of the country is happy to have this milestone as their president, and we're looking in on the merits, on the substance.
MARTIN: Reihan?
Mr. SALAM: I disagree a little bit. I think that the Eric Holder speech was actually a darn good speech because, you know, he was calling Americans a nation of cowards, but he wasn't just calling white Americans a nation of cowards, he was calling all Americans for not having the guts to talk about racial issues more frankly.
And I think that there's a lot of value in that, but of course, you know, it has to be a two-way street or, in a multiracial country, five-way street or twelve-way street, what have you. The other thing is I actually do think it has an impact, but it has a slightly funny impact. I am, you know, as a Republican, but also as a person of color, I think it means a lot to me to have, you know, what I call an ethnic president.
And I think that, you know, I really do want him to succeed. If he was a, you know, an HLS, you know, Harvard Law School grad who was, you know, some, you know, white yuppie guy, would I be as kind to him? Would I be giving him as much of the benefit of the doubt? I don't know.
I mean, and again, I'm trying not to be a part of the nation of cowards and speak frankly about this, and I think that there's a big part of me that, you know, wants him to succeed because I'm very proud that, you know, our country has elected an African-American president. So maybe I am a little bit softer on him than I would be otherwise.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: What's our - give us some homework. What's the next time we should check in? What's the next logical marker to check in on his performance, Matthew?
Mr. CONTINETTI: Well, I think you have to look when Congress goes out for their summer recess. That will be the next time. And he needs to have some of these initiatives passed by then.
MARTIN: Matthew Continetti is associate editor at The Weekly Standard. He's the author of "The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine." And Reihan Salam is an associate editor at The Atlantic. He's co-author of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream." They were both kind enough to join us in our Washington, D.C. studios. To be continued. Thank you so much.
Mr. SALAM: Thank you.
Mr. CONTINETTI: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
