Friday will mark President Obama's 150th day in office. Unlike the scrutiny and fanfare that marked his 100th day as president, Friday will go largely ignored as a point of historical demarcation. But it seems to me time for another assessment anyway.

I give the president a B+, three out of four stars, one-and-a-half thumbs up. His record on the economy is still mixed, but Obama has made remarkable progress pushing his agenda and placing down payments on his promises in every conceivable area.

From ordering the closure of Guantanamo's Camp X-ray and outlawing torture to passing a massive economic stimulus to gearing up for health care reform to rallying our allies to financial regulation and more, the president has masterfully juggled the affairs of state left hanging in mid-air by the Bush administration.

In foreign relations, Obama has steered a new course of firmness with North Korea, vowing to end the cycle of provocation and reward while gaining unprecedented Security Council unity in drawing a line in the sand against Kim Jong Il's increasingly Strangelovian style of international relations. Obama and his national security team, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have laid some of the difficult groundwork to win trust as an honest broker of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, reversing the Bush administration's malignant neglect. And in Iraq, American forces are slowly drawing down while Afghanistan is being given more attention and Pakistan is delivering more cooperation in taking the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban. In short, Obama has made more progress on his foreign policy initiatives in his first 150 days than George W. Bush made in his last 2,000 days.

Obama has kept the momentum going on his agenda despite enjoying a very short honeymoon and unprecedented criticism from former vice-president Dick Cheney and the far right. The nearly filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate has largely held together on important issues despite an overheated Republican minority, while the House has been more contentious and bitterly partisan under Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the intransigent minority she faces.

Obama has left few constituencies in the cold. From issuing serious CAFE standards to insisting on a cap-and-trade system of carbon emissions, Obama is developing strategies against global warming despite the familiar chorus of deniers and business interests. In recent days, Obama has even delivered important (though limited) advances for gays and lesbians by extending federal employee benefits to same-sex couples. While Obama is seen by some gay and lesbian activists as moving too slowly, Obama appears to have weighed the risk of offending that constituency against the lessons learned from President Clinton's early embrace of gay rights. Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was instituted almost simultaneously with his health care proposal, introducing a highly contentious social issue that divided the country at a time when the dubiously constructed "Hillary-care" needed votes.

If there is any criticism of Obama that seems most justified, it is that the president has failed to adequately address the government's projected deficits, which critics contend will double the national debt to $10 trillion over the next decade. In fact, Obama has been short on details and long on overly optimistic assumptions when it comes to planning an exit strategy from his record deficit spending. The timing may not be right, however, to talk about cuts. Franklin Roosevelt attempted to tighten the federal belt too early, only to face another wave of the Great Depression. Giving the Republicans a foothold on tax cuts at this point would place Obama's agenda -- and the economy -- in jeopardy.

He's not the Messiah. He's not even Moses. But Obama's first 150 days have been breathtaking when it comes to delivering on the central tenet of his candidacy: change.