Talk:First 100 days of the Barack Obama presidency

Really?

I'm archiving this section as the topic is now the subject of a AFD discussion. ↜Just me, here, now … 00:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Why is there not an article about Bush's first 100 days? I'm not convinced this is going to be an historically notable subject. Bigbluefish (talk) 12:24, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

The article needs to explain why exactly 100 days are the topic of as much interest as they are (i.e., it's become a standard since The First Hundred Days of FDR's New Deal.--ragesoss (talk) 16:05, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

• Yep: Keep per Other stuff exists. The difference between Bush's first hundred days was that Wikipedia likewise was only in its first months of breathing oxygen (in fact Bush's first inauguration occured when Wikipedia's umbilical cord was still attached to Nupedia); whereas now the lenght of Wikipedia's beard is -- um, to the tune of a dozen million articles! ↜Just me, here, now … 02:16, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Note

The text here has been userfied to User:TonyTheTiger/Obama's first 100 days Xavexgoem (talk) 20:04, 21 January 2009 (UTC) The text remains under the redirect, should anything need to be merged

Title

Barack Obama's first 100 days sounds like the first third of his first year of life. Shouldn't it be Barack Obama's first 100 days of Presidency(is presidency capitalized??)? To assume that Barack Obama's first 100 days refers to his presidency seems to be a case of recentism. For all we know his presidency may be one of his minor accomplishments before his life is finished. Chillum 00:37, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that would be a really good rename, actually, to Barack Obama's first 100 days of Presidency or First 100 days of Barack Obama's Presidency, something like that. And yeah, by convention, the Presidency is capitalized in reference to the American president. rootology (C)(T) 01:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I prefer the latter.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:43, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I also prefer the latter. Chillum 03:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll move it over, we can always do it again if something better comes up. rootology (C)(T) 03:31, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

It is good to be bold. Chillum 03:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't presidency be in lower case? English isn't my first language but I don't think it's a proper noun; then again Presidency of George W. Bush puts it in caps in the introductory sentence... Natural Cut (talk) 02:32, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

According to this[1] and everything else I read you capitalize it when you are referring to a specific president. So you would say "It would be neat to be president", you would also say "It would not be so neat to be President Bush". Chillum 05:14, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

But the question is, would you say "George W. Bush didn't enjoy his Presidency" or "George W. Bush didn't enjoy his presidency". ;-) The former simply looks wrong to me, and American news say "Obama's presidency" so I'm going to stick by my gut and say move it to lower case. Natural Cut (talk) 06:04, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

They did not capitalize "presidency" because that word was not referring to a specific president, it was referring to the position of president. In the same article they say "...that President Barack Obama can handle the crisis with a competent and steady team". When referring to a specific president then it is capitalized. See also [2],[3],[4]. Chillum 06:09, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't disagreeing with you that President would be capitalized... You're 100% correct. It's Presidency [sic] that I'm saying is incorrect. Even when it's President Obama's presidency. Natural Cut (talk) 06:35, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Lol, I spent all that time researching the rules and I forgot what we were comparing to. Yes I think you are right that since "presidency" is not referring to the person who is president that is should not be capitalized. Sorry, it has been a long week and I got a bit befuddled. Chillum 15:52, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

These also agree with your point[5][6]. Chillum 15:56, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and made the move since the grammar rules are clear on this(now that I am thinking straight). Chillum 16:01, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Obama and the Press

It seems to be common knowledge that the media does not like how Obama has handled them. The two first missteps were his opening week venture to the media room for gladhanding when they wanted substantive answers and is blockage of media for the retaking of the oath. I see a {{fact}} was added about this issue. This does not mean he is not handling the media effectively. He has had not Kennedyesque blunders yet to my knowledge. They just don't like his effectiveness.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 08:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Removed for wanting citations

"Although the first hundred days was not a concept relevant in the Lincoln Administration, Obama followed Lincoln by naming the former party front-running Senator from New York as his United States Secretary of State. Lincoln had chosen William H. Seward and Obama chose Hillary Clinton." I'm kind of hoping Obama's presidency won't be exactly like Lincoln's, Civil Wars aren't all they're cracked up to be, but this particular comparison seemed interesting. ChildofMidnight (talk) 02:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Since there are plenty of sources for this subject I see no reason not to diligently remove uncited material. Good job. Chillum 02:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Leno

Why isn't Obama's appearance on Leno included? This is notable being that he was the first sitting President to appear on a late night talk show. Sure it has nothing to do with his policies or 100 days agenda, but he made the trip in order to communicate to a certain audience/demographic about the economy. He also made the "Special Olympics or something" comment blunder. I believe that it is notable and must be included. I don't think articles on Obama should be completely scrubbed clean of any controversies or dumb things he's said or done, it's not "neutral" as you all believe WP should be. We've already seen right wingers complain about how Ayers and his citizenship aren't included on WP enough, I just think we should mention it to make everybody happy and fair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.166.175.146 (talk) 19:58, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

This page needs some serious reconsidering

It pains me, because I love both Wikipedia and Obama, but this article is terrible beyond any excuse. I mean, its ok for plenty of minor topics, but... this isn't. Now I know what you're going to say- "Be the change that you want to see in this article." Well, I believe we need to completely reconsider even having this page, so I'm really doing all I can. So... here it goes. Sorry for the length. If you know what I'm talking about you can skip most of it.

First of all, I do have to agree with most people who argued that the first 100 days is not a standard benchmark for measuring presidents. Its a popular thing to refer to by people who wish to incite parallels to FDR, but other than that the concept has no real meaning. For FDR, it most definitely did have a meaning- it was a specific plan to speedily pass a huge quantity of drastic policy changes. The whole idea behind the 100 days was, everyone wanted FDR to make those drastic changes. Obviously there were some setbacks (laws struck down by Supreme Court), but generally the Congress wanted to do everything he recommended could as fast as possible.

This period has been nothing like that. Obama has been working very hard, and he has made many positive changes, and far faster than we are used to. But Obama didn't come into office with huge bundle of laws to shove through Congress. And of course, he's right not to, because the Congress is not like it was under FDR. Republicans are almost totally unified in their opposition, and they are very vocal. Not only do they have the power to slow or stop the crucial legislation, they have leverage that comes with it. Yes, things are getting accomplished, but the tone is still of constant debate among mostly party lines, except that even some members of Obama's own party will oppose measures.

FDR's First 100 days was significant historically because it was a sudden change of tone to "the debate's over- get these things through." And this isn't just looking back- that was the idea he was promote. I'm not commenting on the validity of either approach, just that they are way different and these periods are fundamentally different.

What makes this article really bad isn't just that it probably shouldn't exist. The problem is that since the beginning, this has been a concern, and the consensus opinion is to just leave it as is so long as the intro is devoted to trying to justifying the article's existence. The introduction provides almost no actual information, like initiatives he has focused on (save the obvious ARRA), the manner in which he has used executive orders and other tools, how he has worked with the press, how he has appealed to the public to put pressure on Congress, or- well, there's an awful lot it could say. I know why its so empty- basically the same text was there when this article was written- before the inauguration. The intro was written without even any knowledge about the tone of public affairs during the "notable period" it is seeming to present.

Moving down the page, we get information on other random presidents and the early parts of their administration, even though no one ever even considered the concept as relevant to them- because it isn't. The Comparisons section is sort of on topic, but it definitely not NPOV, and soon it gets off-topic to just comparing presidents. By then end, it is a random walk though assorted facts said elsewhere on the page and irrelevant trivia. Again, it all seems like it is desperately trying to convince the reader that "100 days" is significant.

I usually can't blame an article for having plenty of information, but Jesus why is the Oath of Office event so important to this supposedly defining time frame? That's why we have Inauguration of Barack Obama.

The Administration and Cabinet section looks really top-notch, but why is it even here? It is by far the biggest section, yet nothing related to staff was even mentioned in the intro. If this is about the first 100 days, shouldn't it be following the actions instead of the people? The style just doesn't make sense.

The remaining text has some useful information, we already have pretty much the same stuff and more already on Presidency of Barack Obama#First 100 days. Which, by the way, I feel also needs to be changed, but not really that much.

Ok, so if we keep this article, consider that: We will have to continue to fit in more and more information about the presidency into the article until we hit an arbitrary 101 day mark. Then we're in a rather awkward position, right? What happens if a Cabinet appointment gets put off that long? When Obama makes a foreign policy decision, where does that go? Well, if its important enough, obviously a mention in Presidency of Barack Obama, and clearly more extensive coverage on Foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration. If it happens in the first 100 days, it also goes here. As time goes on, we'll have evern more duplicates than there are already, which means edit confusion, extra work, and less consistency

Alternatively, we can: For the Administration and Cabinet section, we can just put it in its own page. Then it can have as many days as it takes, and we can break it up into sections, including starting it off with the intro it already has, except with it not cramped between everything else. Then we get to put the article in the Barack Obama template like its tiny brethren List of judicial appointments made by Barack Obama. As for the inauguration info, again we already have the fantastic Inauguration of Barack Obama. We can just merge in any appropriate information that was left out there (though I doubt there will be). For everything else... like I said its mostly duplicate or irrelevant anyway. If everyone wants to take the time to scavenge through it for nuggets, we can just dismantle this thing slowly. And hell- if everyone feels the phrase is really that relevant, we can leave behind a page like "First 100 Days (Barack Obama)" to document its widespread usage in the media, and its implications. This could be a good, relatively short article that would fit with other public image pages. Really, I think it would make a great section in a page just on his press coverage- like, his public image, only to the media.

I feel like the Obama articles should really reflect some of Wikipedia's best editing tendencies- and part of that is organization to make things easy to navigate, easier to edit, and more consistent. So lets get this fixed.

BTW, I'm sorry for coming on strong (and long- I probably was way too elaborate, but I don't like the tit-for-tat bickering- I'd rather just say it all once). Also, just in advance- I probably made some mistakes here, and I'm sure you guys have some better ideas. And I don't mean to criticize the people who have helped to develop the article. Its got some good stuff, its just sometimes things get a little off-track when the purpose of an article isn't clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian Burnet (talk • contribs) 22:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

• I agree that a 100 days article is misleading. We should perhaps have sub articles for each year of a president's term, end capped by each annual State of Union address. Aaron charles (talk) 17:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• • I guess so.. But other Presidents' pages are only broken up into terms. This page is just too much of a clone of Presidency of Barack Obama. I really think most of this should be merged into that. Ian Burnet (talk) 19:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

There's an article on the Invitations to Obama's inauguration. That shows how ridiculous Wikipedia has gotten in trying to cover this guy. I think this is an exact replica of his normal "Presidency" article. We don't need this much coverage on him unless somebody's gonna write "Second 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency" or "2009 in the Obama presidency". As I recall, Wikipedia is "not news"