Beware of those who rush to judgment about this Presidency.

For better or worse, Pres. Obama does not have the luxury of a honeymoon period.  He must build and staff his administration and at the same time struggle with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and also follow through on his many commitments made during the election.

Whether he can afford to concentrate on bipartisanship or decides he cannot afford the time that strategy will take, we will soon know. Bush campaigned as a ‘compassionate conservative’ who was going to bring folks together but soon abandoned all of that to venture on a very different path.

But it is going to take even more time before we know how truly successful Pres. Obama will be. It’s always seemed to me that what it takes to win a nomination is different from what it takes to win an election which in turn is different from what it takes to govern. That Pres. Obama was able to negotiate the first two of these hurdles is clearly no guarantee of success in the third.

Yet one of the impressive aspects of his succeeding in the first two was both his preparation and his ability to regain his balance and stability when thrown off course or when the unplanned occurred.  Will the same be true for the much more difficult job of running the country, especially in such difficult times?

Anyone who claims to know how well or poorly he will do, or is doing, may make the same mistake(s) that all those ‘Inside the Beltway’ gasbags made during the campaign (i.e., ‘Hilliary is a shoo-in,’  ‘the country will not elect a black man,’ ‘he is too liberal for the country,’ etc.).

While it might have been relaxing for Pres. Obama to have had a honeymoon - time to settle into his new job - that was not to be. Let us hope that those qualities that surfaced over the last several years serve him well in this biggest of any hurdle he has faced.  Much is at stake for all of us in how he does. 

And in the meantime, be wary of any one who claims to know how well Pres. Obama is doing. 

UPDATE:  One week after the Blog above, Frank Rich seems to agree with me (has he been reading MillersTime?).  See his NY Times Sunday column here, where he quotes Pres. Obama’s adviser David Axelrod as saying, “This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking.” Rich also thinks that the Republicans are isolated in believing the noise from their echo chamber and “are now as out of touch with reality as the ‘inevitable’ Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa.” Rich can sometimes be a bit of a ‘gasbag’ himself, but when he agrees with me, he is of course brilliant.