Editorial roundup

Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y., on President Obama:

Though President Barack Obama won swift approval of $800 billion in spending to help prop up the economy, a White House celebration was likely short-lived.

Given the stiff Republican resistance he faced, Obama would be wise to take time to steady himself. What he experienced so far as president is bound to be only a taste of what’s to come.

Republicans, no doubt, will dig in their heels even deeper as Obama moves on to other critical issues such as health care reform and global warming.

He might as well toughen up quickly to the ways of Washington. Otherwise, Washington insiders will eat him up as they did reform-minded former President Jimmy Carter.

Don’t take any of this to mean that Obama should give in to the temptation to play by the establishment’s rules. He’s obligated to push hard for change; that’s what voters elected him to do.

Obama must work through disappointments such as those caused by advisers Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle and Bill Richardson. And he must continue to take risks such as nominating Republican Judd Gregg for a high-level Cabinet job even though the New Hampshire senator abruptly withdrew.

Meantime, Republicans, who can’t seem to get out of campaign mode, shouldn’t forget the lessons of 1993. As columnist David Broder recently pointed out, in lockstep the GOP opposed new President Bill Clinton’s first budget and tax package. The nation later enjoyed unprecedented prosperity.

Los Angeles Times, on food safety:

The federal agencies that are supposed to safeguard the nation’s food have long resisted calls ... for merging into a single food authority. Amid the peanut-product salmonella outbreak, though, it’s hard to imagine how their objections can stand.

... Countries that have reformed their food-safety oversight — Canada and Japan, for instance — switched to a single agency. They also gave their food regulators more authority, and technology that allows quick tracking of food from farm to table. Yet such transformations won’t help unless the agency is properly funded and required to perform regular inspections.

The tainted peanut products, which have sickened hundreds and may have caused nine deaths, represent a new level of food outrage, more serious than even the salmonella salsa and downer-cow beef recalls of 2008.

In this case, the plant’s management allegedly knew it was shipping food products that could kill, and then lied about it. The ongoing criminal investigation is an appropriate response; this should be treated as seriously as a multiple homicide. What, you might wonder, were these people thinking? Possibly that food inspection is so lax, and the responses to mass poisonings so predictable -- official indignation followed by complacency -- that nothing much would be done about it.