It is far too early to make a final judgment

Need a little more than an hour of plane to go to Harvard University near Boston to Washington. But the academic ivory tower seems so remote from the "washingtonienne jungle."

Like Versailles in the time of its splendour, Washington is a city that lives and by the policy, by the power and the critique of power. And as we are in a democracy, criticism is expressed freely.From Washington, it is easier to understand the contrast between the personal trust which is always the President Barack Obama and doubts over its policy. In other words, Americans like this "is" and, through him, themselves, but they worry about what it is, not enough for some, for others. "He enters history in the Pantheon of the greatest Presidents of the United States or it will fail very quickly", assigned me one of my interlocutors, close to the Democratic Party and the President himself.

"Doubts" of Washington began with the selection and the Organization of the men. Barack Obama is a free man. It is his election to no religious, ethnic or economic group. It brought together on his name too diverse coalition that it otherwise. But he enjoying his freedom

On the foreign policy front, are selected personalities not too strong with the multiplication of super-sous-secrétaires of State, Richard Holbrooke, in particular, and their coordination by the national security adviser, General James Jones, too low, with a risk that everything must go "up" to a President who has neither the time nor the competence necessary to master the details

Economic policy, the risk is reversed. The Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, the hero of the film "Les Incroyables adventures of Benjamin Button", is still young and still less reassuring over the weeks! Despite his eighty-two years, Paul Volcker s/he probably more markets. The choice and the Organization of the men, there is a certain contradiction between the two possible readings of the personality of the President Barack Obama. Is it prior to any pragmatic or ideologue despite his centrist approach

The Republican party is locked in an ideological stance which, on behalf of "the defence of the market", the duct to call its wishes, sometimes openly, the failure of Barack Obama. For its part, the Democratic Party behaves more partisan that only the Chairman would no doubt like. "It cannot waste such a crisis," suggests Rahm Emanuel, the Secretary General of the White House, to justify the link established between reforms essential structures, energy, social protection, health and education, and the fight against the financial crisis. In wanting to take advantage of the crisis to push through his agenda of reforms, the Democratic Party as the Republican party are not being underestimated the unique character of the financial crisis The three priorities of the new President of the United States should not be "banks, banks and the banks", as many economists in Washington and elsewhere think so

A too broad program and therefore too diluted, weak coordination of men... the rumour of Washington is not necessarily encouraging. On American television stations, political career and the election of Barack Obama are already processed in historical reading keys. His speech in Chicago on the night of 4 to November 5, 2008 seems to belong to an already so distant past, while less than six months separate us from this triumphant night, apotheosis of the American dream.

But America comes not in Washington, and of course Harvard. There are deep in the American culture of the resources of hope and dream, very superior to those existing in Europe. It is far too early to make a final judgment. The beginnings are certainly difficult, but the crisis is of a scale and of exceptional gravity.