Obama has had an epoch-defining 100 days

But vultures are gathering. We have seen the scale and scope of his ambition. But every element in the president's agenda carries a clear possibility of failure
Gary Younge
Monday 27 April 2009

Towards the end of a press conference last month, ABC News reporter Ann Compton asked Barack Obama a question simultaneously obvious and oblique. "Yours is a rather historic presidency," she said. "And I'm just wondering whether in any of the policy debates that you've had within the White House the issue of race has come up, or whether it has in the way you feel you've been perceived by other leaders or by the American people? Or has the last 64 days been a relatively colourblind time?"

Obvious because the issue of Obama's race had, directly or indirectly, dominated the national conversation for the last two years at least. So much so that his election was not just a feat of politics but of imagination. Oblique, because after just a few months it seemed like a question from a bygone age. As the number of jobless edges towards double figures, Pakistan implodes, and the nation looks ready to foreclose on Detroit, the banal fact of skin pigmentation has momentarily found its rightful place in the order of things. the rest