DAVID GREENE, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene sitting in for Scott Simon. This week President Obama marked the first 100 days of his administration with a news conference. Senator Arlen Specter moved to the Democratic side of the aisle. Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his retirement. The flu epidemic continued to spread. And Chrysler sputtered into bankruptcy. To talk about all this we have NPR senior news analyst Dan Schorr with us. Hello, Dan.
DAN SCHORR: Hello, David, and welcome aboard.
GREENE: Thank you. I appreciate it. So the World Health Organization says the swine flu - or I guess the H1N1 virus - is about to go from epidemic to pandemic.
SCHORR: Yes.
GREENE: And there are a lot of questions and fears out there right now. How has the Obama administration handled this outbreak?
SCHORR: Well, in the first place, you get President Obama himself right out there doing all the briefings and acting as though he's in charge. This is - as opposed to Katrina some years ago, when the Federal government reacted very slow. Here you have the president here all the time, ready to talk about it, ready to say what's necessary to say about it, and to give advice to people on how to act.
GREENE: But the president's number two, Vice President Joe Biden, didn't exactly help the administration's cause with, I guess, some ill-advised statements he made the other day. What did Biden say?
SCHORR: Well, I'm afraid the vice president suffers from a disease called foot in his mouth. What he said was - he was trying to explain to people that if you are sick, stay home. Okay. But he went further. He said don't travel on airplanes. Don't go into any confined space. That went a lot further than anybody in the White House wanted him to go, and if people did that it would have severe economic effects. They put out a revised version. He said, yes, this is what he really meant to say. Life goes on.
GREENE: Not the first time Biden has been off message, one might say.
SCHORR: Or the last.
GREENE: Well, how did President Obama fare in that prime-time news conference when he summed up the first hundred days in office?
SCHORR: Well, he had his usual eloquence. He really could skip from one subject to another very neatly. He impressed the press who was there by his willingness to think on his feet, speak on his feet, and so on. He did very well. But in the end what we got was, to put it simply after all these days, was the nation thinks he's off to a good start, but it's a start, and a lot more to come, as we can see every day now. I mean who knew two weeks ago that we'd be dealing with a flu epidemic.
GREENE: Well, President Obama may have picked up another vote. Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican, has now said that he's going to switch over to the Democratic side. How did that come about?
SCHORR: Well, I think it's fairly easy to dope(ph) out why it came about. He said because the Republican Party had left him. I think you can put it more concretely by saying that he faced a very uphill fight for nomination on the Republican side and he probably could do much better in the general election as a Democrat. Two hundred thousand Pennsylvanians have shifted from Republican to the Democratic side, and so he went to the Democrats because that's where his future lay.
GREENE: Well, in other news in this, I guess, busy week, our own colleague, Nina Totenberg, is reporting that David Souter appointed to the Supreme Court by the elder President Bush is planning to resign at the end of this term. I mean does this mean the balance of the court is likely to change?
SCHORR: Well, apparently not. I mean, it was again President Obama (unintelligible) in front of the microphone to say he had spoken to Justice Souter and Souter had done wonderful work and very nice things to say about it. And then as to what happens, the president said before the term starts next October he expects to have somebody in place, him or her, he mentioned, which may give you some idea of what some of the possibilities are.
As to whether it changes the balance in the court - not necessarily and not likely. Souter, who was a Republican appointee, voted more often with the Democrats. So if you're going to replace Souter, you're replacing a more or less liberal with another liberal. I don't think that in itself will change the balance in the court.
GREENE: Chrysler, an American icon, is now headed for bankruptcy.
SCHORR: It's bad day for icons.
GREENE: Day for icons. Well, how do you think the White House handled this situation? I mean, does this mean the end for Chrysler?
SCHORR: Well - well, the president says no. The president's standing behind the union, standing behind most of the people at Chrysler, and apparently ready to pour some money in. These days going into bankruptcy no longer exactly means that you're dead. There is life after death. Sometimes they will manage to get rid of some of the debts which they have to get rid of, which you do by bankruptcy, and then go on with help from the federal government, which the president has promised.
GREENE: They certainly have a lot of work to do. We have a little bit of time for some foreign developments. How important do you think it is that we hear the Pakistani army has recovered some land from the Taliban?
SCHORR: I think it's terribly important. We were hearing from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was practically denouncing the Pakistani government for not doing what it should be doing with all the money they were getting from the United States, and so finally after retreating, retreating, retreating, until the Taliban was not very far from Islamabad, the army moved in, has managed to recover some places from the Taliban, and it's the first sign of real resistance on the part of the Pakistanis that we've seen for some time.
GREENE: My burning question: Who are you putting money on in the Kentucky Derby?
SCHORR: In the Kentucky Derby? What is that, some kind of horse race?
GREENE: Think so. It's today. I want some wagering advice. Can we meet outside the studio?
(Soundbite of laughter)
GREENE: That is NPR's senior analyst, Dan Schorr. Thanks, Dan.
SCHORR: My pleasure.
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