True measure of the first 100 days
U NLESS the world ends before Saturday, most assessments of President Trump’s first 100 days will include a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. The emphasis will reveal more about those doing the grading than Trump himself.
If you liked him from the start, you can cite real progress, such as growing economic confidence and Trump’s successful meetings with foreign leaders. He is trying to keep faith with his campaign promises, though he failed at repealing ObamaCare.
If you were immune to his message and the messenger from the beginning, you still are. You see stumbles that suggest White House incompetence, doubt whether Trump fully separated himself from his businesses, and worry he’ll start World War III with a tweet.
Yet the polarized reaction following a polarized election is not the whole story. Because we are not yet at the juncture where anything involving Trump can be taken for granted, the 100-day ritual has special meaning. To understand my point, let’s go back to the beginning — to the wee hours of Nov. 9.
When Trump and his family took a Manhattan hotel stage to claim victory, they looked as shell-shocked as the rest of the world. He was scoring a smashing upset by flipping six blue states and adding 100 electoral votes to the 206 Mitt Romney won four years earlier.
The jubilation among his supporters offered a stark contrast to the weeping and wailing of Hillary Clinton’s. She had called Trump to concede — we learned later she did so only after President Barack Obama insisted — but kept out of sight in the crushing end to her quest.
Or was it? For within hours, her supporters took their anger to the streets, denouncing Trump as “Not My President” in cities across America. They continued for days, and some protests were punctuated by violence.
Legal efforts to overturn the election also began. One, led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, focused on demanding recounts in three states Trump narrowly won — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Stein looked to be a stalking horse, and Clinton’s team quickly joined the effort.
A separate challenge to the results focused on persuading Electoral College delegates in red states to switch from Trump to Clinton or even to abstain, in hopes of denying him the necessary majority of 270.
The desperate feeling in the air cut both ways — the odds against overturning the results were long, but given the shock of Trump’s upset, there was a sense that anything could happen.appen.
The pressureressure felt enormous and the wheelsels of American democ-democracy mightght come flying off.
Clearly,y, Clinton’s camp held out hopee it could steal the elec-election. Herr big margin in the pop-popular votete became a rationale, even as she now looked shameless afterr denouncing Trump dur-during the campaigncampaign for his refusal to promise that he wouldn’t contest the results. lts.
Then the Russians came, or rather the Obama ama administration unleasheded a flood of leaks suggesting Trump’ss team had colluded with Russiassia to tip the election.ction. In December, ber, Obama issued sanctions ns against officials andand firms and nd expelled d 35 Russians from the United States while ordering his intelligence chiefs to produce a report within a month — while he was still in office. That report concluded that Vladimir Putin directed propaganda outlets and hackers to sabotage the election and discredit Clinton, with the goal of helping Trump. January also brought the sensational Russian dossier on Trump, which looked like a bombshell until it was exposed as a dud. No matter, the hothouse talk of impeachment grew, and social media carried numerous posts about assassination. Madonna talked of blowing up the White House and others spoke ominously of “stopping” Trump. Each outrage was quickly replacedplaced by a new one, with shadowy stories about Trump’s team’s contact with Russia appearing on the eve of his