Trump right about ‘ridiculous standard’ of 100 days
The date was July 24, 1933. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sitting behind a desk in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room. To his left was a microphone, to his right a glass of water. In front of him was his speech, written on a few pieces of paper.
That day, about four months after his inauguration, Roosevelt delivered his third radio address to the people. That speech — one of the nearly 30 fireside chats he made as president — was an appeal to raise the minimum wage and an update of sorts on his plan to pull the country out of the Great Depression. In his nearly 3,000-word progress report, Roosevelt talked about the achievements of his young presidency — the first 100 days “devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”
Since then, the idea of the “first 100 days” has taken on a life of its own: Some try to gauge the success (or failure) of an administration by the actions conducted in the first few months, while others view it as a time for leaders to set the tone of the rest of their presidency.
But what has become apparent over time is that the first three months say little about a new president’s achievements, let alone his legacy or his agenda, experts say. It’s simply too short a time to achieve something lasting and meaningful.
“I think what history tells us is that it’s an arbitrary benchmark,” said Fredrik Logevall, a presidential historian and an international affairs professor at Harvard University. “It hasn’t correlated very much with subsequent success or failure. Whether an administration has success or not really depends on the four years, or eight years if you have two terms.”
In reality, Logevall said, it’s a trap that many presidents after Roosevelt have knowingly walked into, pressuring themselves to turn their administration into a “beehive of activity” to meet what they know to be a shortsighted deadline.
Still, the first 100 days has become a tool for journalists to take a snapshot of a young presidency, and a public relations strategy for an administration to sell itself to the public, experts say.
That’s understandable, said Nicole Hemmer, a presidential studies professor at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, but one should not overinterpret what little that snapshot says.
During his first 100 days, Roosevelt pushed 15 major bills through Congress. One of them, the Emergency Banking Relief Act, which was meant to stabilize the banking system, was drafted in four days. Congress passed it in eight hours. Roosevelt signed it just five days after he took office.
Roosevelt moved at an unprecedented speed. That’s because he had to. Congress promised him autonomy because it had to.
By the time he took office, a quarter of the country’s workforce was jobless and millions of homeowners had defaulted on their mortgages. Scores of banks had folded, and thousands of farms were being foreclosed on every month.
His successful 100 days was, in some ways, the product of a perfect storm: a massive economic crisis and a congressional majority that gave Roosevelt the ability to swiftly pass major pieces of legislation, said John Frendreis, a political-science professor at Loyola University in Chicago.
The closest contemporary example is probably President Barack Obama, Frendreis said. Like Roosevelt, he took office during an economic crisis and had a congressional majority that allowed him to swiftly push his multibillion-dollar stimulus package. Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with nearly no Republican votes. Obama signed it less than a month after he became president.
For the most part, the first 100 days of presidencies after Roosevelt have become less and less productive, experts say. Part of that has to do with Congress.
In the 1970s, Congress massively expanded its subcommittees to give members more opportunities for leadership roles. That added extra steps in the legislative process, making enacting legislation a longer and more complicated process.
Partisanship and polarization also have become more pronounced, particularly over the past decade or so.
That divisiveness seems to be even more heightened during the Trump administration, when disagreements are not just between the two major parties, but also within the party in control.
The bottom line, experts say, is that presidents, the public and the media would be better served by paying less attention to an arbitrary deadline.