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The Deciding Factor

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The Associated Press

Published: March 16, 2009

WASHINGTON - That's what presidents do. They decide.

Some do it better than others, but all do it. History does the grading.

President Barack Obama, taking office with the economy crashing and two wars under way, barely knew his way around the Oval Office before he was neck-deep in critical decision-making.

As an administration official put it, Obama knows he's "firing with live bullets."

Broadly put, presidents make two kinds of decisions: those they choose and those they must.

So far, Obama has chosen to act on matters he brought ready-made to the White House, including a determination to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, issue strong statements against torture and reverse Bush policy on embryonic stem-cell funding.

The 44th president also walked into the White House with his mind made up on undertaking a massive spending program to pull the economy from a nose dive unmatched in at least a half-century. There also was his commitment to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.

On the economy and Iraq, however, Obama's intention to act on predetermined choices was quickly complicated by "the streams of pressure," as Ed Gillespie, a counselor to former President George W. Bush, calls it, that bear down on all presidents. Those realities gum up chosen decisions with those that must be made - the unappetizing but necessary compromises - to govern in Washington.

History still is grading Bush's exam paper. Obama, meanwhile, has just begun to write his.

TRANSITIONING FROM CAMPAIGNING TO GOVERNING

Stephen Biddle, an expert on national security policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it's healthy that Obama is avoiding the mind-set that Bush adopted when he came to office with a reflexive ABC approach, short for Anything But Clinton.

Biddle said that in matters of foreign policy, one president often finds himself boxed in by decisions of his predecessors that limit his options.

WHERE OBAMA AND BUSH DISAGREE

HEALTH CARE FOR CHILDREN: Obama signed legislation to provide health coverage to 11 million children that had been twice vetoed by Bush.

HELP FOR WORKERS: Obama issued pro-union executive orders and signed a law to help workers suing over pay discrimination.

MILITARY TROOPS: The president is shifting more troops to Afghanistan and ordered all U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq by September of next year.

WATERBOARDING: His attorney general declared waterboarding to be torture, setting a sharply different tone from the past administration.

GUANTANAMO: Obama has promised to close the Guantanamo detention center within a year.

STEM-CELL RESEARCH: Proponents of stem cell research had expected the new president to immediately reverse Bush's executive order prohibiting federal financing for research involving new embryonic stem-cell lines. Obama overruled the Bush rules on March 9.

ENDANGERED SPECIES: Obama is restoring a requirement that U.S. agencies consult with independent federal experts to determine whether their actions might harm threatened and endangered species.

WHERE OBAMA MAY STILL OVERRULE BUSH

In some cases, Obama hasn't acted fast enough or gone far enough for those eager for change.

SUPPORTING RELIGION: Groups that had been critical of Bush's support for religious organizations grumbled when Obama expanded and redefined the White House office that helps those charities. Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he was shocked that Obama hadn't reversed Bush executive orders that allow religious groups receiving federal money to discriminate in hiring.

Obama stressed that the program would not show favoritism to any religious group and would adhere to a strict separation of church and state.

ETHICS RULES: On another issue, good-government groups cheered when Obama issued strict new ethics rules for appointees. But they question whether some appointees measure up to those standards.

WHERE OBAMA AND BUSH AGREE

WHITE HOUSE RECORDS: The Obama administration sided with Bush in trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails from the Bush years.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government, the private group that sued, called it "an incredibly cynical and narrow view" of the government's legal obligations. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs countered that the administration still was pursuing "a greater amount of transparency than Washington has seen."

ENEMY COMBATANTS: The administration filed a legal brief that echoed Bush in maintaining that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights and arguing that enemy combatants held at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention.

However, the Obama administration is dropping the use of the term enemy combatant.

STATE SECRETS: Even as Obama officials promised a thorough review of its use of state secrets protections, government lawyers continued to invoke the state secrets law in a federal appeals court in San Francisco. That case involves a suit over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, in which U.S. operatives seized foreign suspects and handed them over to other countries for questioning.

MORE STATE SECRETS: The Obama administration is supporting Bush's use of the state secrets privilege in a case involving lawsuits against telecommunications companies by those alleging the companies violated wiretapping and privacy laws.

The Bush administration had invoked the state secrets privilege to keep a judge from reviewing government documents laying out the program under which the companies allowed the government to eavesdrop on their customers without a court's permission after the Sept. 11 attacks.

IMMIGRATION: As a candidate, Barack Obama promised an immigration policy that would shift emphasis away from workplace raids and place greater focus on employers who hire illegal immigrants and overall immigration reform. Some immigration advocates were hopeful Obama would sign an executive order that would freeze immigration raids, but that hasn't happened.

TRANSITIONING FROM CAMPAIGNING TO GOVERNING

WHERE OBAMA AND BUSH DISAGREE

WHERE OBAMA MAY STILL OVERRULE BUSH

WHERE OBAMA AND BUSH AGREE

Information from The Washington Post was used in this report.

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