Friday, December 25, 2009

Obama insider evaluates first year

Jim Johnson says president has not earned B+ grade


By JON DUVAL
Express Staff Writer

Part-time Ketchum resident Jim Johnson spoke to a packed house at The Community Library in Ketchum on Wednesday. Johnson, who has extensive experience in both business and politics, shared his views on the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. Photo by David N. Seelig

While President Barack Obama, during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, gave himself a B+ grade for his first year in office, part-time Ketchum resident and Washington, D.C., insider Jim Johnson called that an inflated mark. Johnson said Obama had not fulfilled a promise of his campaign to reduce political partisan conflict nor had he reduced unemployment.

"The possibility of post-partisanship and the breaking of gridlock in D.C. has not materialized," Johnson said. "I believe we now have the most partisan atmosphere we've ever had."

Johnson, with ties to the Obama administration, shared his take on the president's first year in office with a standing-room-only lecture Wednesday at The Community Library in Ketchum. He spoke as a follow-up to a similar lecture he gave at the library in July.

Van Gordon Sauter, a part-time Ketchum resident and former head of CBS News, introduced Johnson as "ideally suited to address current political, economic and social issues."

Johnson has an extensive resume that includes current positions on the boards of Goldman Sachs and Target, former CEO of Fannie Mae, executive assistant to Vice President Walter Mondale during the Carter administration and former chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Arts and of the Brookings Institution.

Johnson was also involved in the vice-presidential selection process for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Despite his background, Johnson knew he had some significant competition for his audience's attention.

"Of all the days you don't want to be competing with the (ski) mountain, this is one of them," Johnson said of the bluebird day.

However, the weather didn't seem to temper interest in his discussion, which ranged from health care to the economy to the Middle East.

Johnson noted that Obama got off to a good start, but that his approval ratings have dropped significantly in the second half of the year, at least partly due to the unpopularity of the proposed health-care reform bill. Johnson said that would not likely change in the new year, and predicted that the Democratic Party would lose 17 seats in the House of Representatives.

Saying another disappointment has been a lack of focus on unemployment, Johnson contended that more energy should have been spent on restoring jobs rather than on relying on stimulus funding and bailing out the banks.

"There's also been too much rhetoric on how evil business is," Johnson said. "There should be an atmosphere of working together instead of class warfare."

Despite those complaints, Johnson expressed optimism about the economy, predicting that consumer confidence would rise in the coming months, helping Obama's approval rating grow by 5 percent by the end of next year.

He also predicted that a final health-care reform bill would pass by mid-February, that no climate regulations would pass in 2010 and that unemployment would drop by 1.5 percent.

On the likelihood of his predictions coming true, Johnson was humorously self-deprecating.

"The key to being right is to make a large number of predictions," he said. "Then someone will notice one of them was dead-on."

In response to a question from the audience, Johnson declined to venture a guess about how long U.S. troops would remain in the Middle East, but did opine that it would not be a good idea from a national security standpoint to remove America's military presence from the area.

"There are a lot of forces ... that don't wish America well," he said. "This is difficult business, but we can't say, 'Let's let the Taliban take over again in Afghanistan and not care about what happens in Pakistan.'"

Jon Duval: jduval@mtexpress.com




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