Michael Gove: Forget 100 days, Obama's honeymoon is already over

At least Barack Obama has had five weeks. The hopes which attended President Obama's inauguration were so unprecedentedly, soaringly, stratospherically high that it was inevitable the process of coming down to earth would be bumpy. But few expected the descent to be so rapid. In the last few days the President who was welcomed across the world as not just America's, but the globe's, redeemer has turned into – well, into just another politician.

The announcement this weekend that the Obama administration will not close Bagram prison, the Afghan Guantanamo where dangerous enemy combatants are held in a sort of legal limbo, has profoundly disappointed the human rights activists who saw in Obama's advent the dawn of a new age. It was already the case that the Obama team were rethinking their position on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques after a CIA presentation demonstrated how much valuable intelligence such methods had yielded. Whatever its many defects, the Bush administration ensured there were no terrorist attacks on American soil after the horror of 9/11. That is one aspect of the Bush record from which Obama does not wish to depart.

Disappointing human rights activists by putting US security before their campaigns isn't the only area, however, in which Obama is running into trouble. The biggest item in the presidential in-tray is the bulging folder marked "Impact of the Recession". Americans are losing jobs, and US output is plummeting, at levels which recall the Great Depression. Like FDR, Obama was elected to fix the economy. But a growing band of observers fear he may have carelessly sacrificed the most precious assets required to turn things round quickly; the assets which FDR deployed so skilfully in his fight for US economic life: confidence and competence.

Confidence in Obama's recovery package took a battering when his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, already damaged by a bruising confirmation process which revolved around unpaid personal tax debts, was thought to fumble his first major intervention. Geithner was supposed to reveal just how Team Obama would deploy taxpayers' cash to restore health to the financial system, but his package was perilously thin on detail, recalling the botched and superficial attempt by his Bush-era predecessor, Hank Paulson, to deal with the same issue. As Geithner spoke, the markets tanked and confidence that things would be radically different, and better, under the new President slowly ebbed.

Of course, Geithner wasn't the only Obama appointee to have a rough ride in his early days. But at least he's safely in office. Other key Obama picks, including his candidate for Health Secretary, his old friend and ally Tom Daschle, also ran into trouble during the confirmation process. Daschle's own tax affairs were so tangled that he had to withdraw his candidature. The process hurt particularly acutely because healthcare reform was one of Obama's central domestic priorities and Daschle was personally very close to the President. Obama almost turned the process to his advantage with a typically gracious and public acknowledgement of his failings in the affair. But the impression of grip, that vital aura of confidence, had taken a knock.

And indeed the whole process of getting the administration's staff in place, and getting petrol in the tank of government, isn't happening as it should. There are 20 positions at the top of the Treasury Department in the President's gift. These jobs, the Treasury Secretary's position and those of his deputies and assistant secretaries, are the vital posts which steer economic policy. Obama has had since his election in November to fill these key positions but last week only one out of the 20 – the Treasury Secretary – had actually been filled.

This personnel vacuum at the top of a crucial department has already had an unfortunate effect on the central plank of Obama's economic recovery strategy. Obama believes the US economy needs a fiscal stimulus to get moving again, a stimulus made up of both tax cuts to boost demand and public works to create jobs. Billions of dollars are being poured into the package and a huge amount rests on getting it right. But instead of getting his own people to design the package, Obama subcontracted its construction to the Democrats in Congress – the equivalent of Gordon Brown letting his backbenchers write his Budget for him. The result has been a package stuffed with special-interest deals and cash for the causes and constituencies favoured by particular congressmen. Its been widely attacked as an exercise in pork barrel politics.

Obama can, of course, recover from the position he now finds himself in. Other successful politicians have stumbled at the beginning. Clinton's first months were overshadowed by a row over gays in the military and Mrs Thatcher only got into her stride three years into her first term. Obama has formidable gifts: luminous intelligence, palpable decency, coolness under fire. His judgments on many issues, including education reform, are brave and right. But, like all politicians, he is mortal. And he needs to recognise the realities of his new position. However powerful his call for change, the realities of government will always call for good old-fashioned, do sweat the small stuff, get down to the details governing.

Michael Gove is Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families