Reagan has established his goals faster, communicated a greater sense of economic urgency and come forward with more comprehensive proposals than any new President since the first 100 days of Franklin D. Library of CongressĤ ) Ronald Reagan : Here’s one contemporary assessment of Reagan’s first 100 days: “Mr. Next to that, Jefferson’s early political moves - for example, his refusal to pay Tripoli the tribute it had demanded, an act that triggered the First Barbary War - pale.įor a bad first 100 days, William H. And that meant that the United States had successfully transferred power from one party to another, a crucial test for a fledgling democracy. By the end of his first 100 days, it was clear that he had been accepted as a legitimate president. When George Washington decided not to run for a third term, John Adams came into office as his hand-picked successor and a fellow member of the Federalist Party.īut Jefferson was the real test, because it required the Federalists to willingly hand power over to their rivals, the Democratic-Republicans. That’s really all he needed to do in order to ensure he landed near the top of the pile. To wit: Jefferson got through his first 100 days without being deposed in a violent coup. And he did all this despite falling seriously ill with an infection that kept him incapacitated for nearly a month.ģ ) Thomas Jefferson : The first thing to understand about the 100-days standard is that it’s not a level playing field. He even struck a blow against nepotism in government, turning down his nephew’s request to be named a US attorney. In his first few months, Washington signed the first tariff act, endorsed the controversial Bill of Rights, and established the Departments of Foreign Affairs and of War. As the National Review’s Richard Brookhiser notes, even the small things were precedent-setting: Should presidents be referred to as “Mister” or “Your Highness”? Should they shake hands or bow? Every decision Washington made in his first 100 days was another step toward turning the idea of an American government into a reality. And unlike certain other commanders in chief, he could truthfully describe every action in the first 100 days as the first, the best, the most important thing a US president had ever done. Unanimously elected, widely beloved, Washington came into office buoyed by a tremendous amount of goodwill. But all you really need to know about FDR’s first 100 days is this: It was so successful that it became the yardstick by which all future presidents would be measured.Ģ ) George Washington : A no-brainer. We could talk about his historic decision to move the US off the gold standard. We could talk about the Emergency Banking Act, which restored confidence in a collapsing American banking system. (Trump famously boasted, in week 11, of having “one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency.”) The bestġ ) Franklin Roosevelt : We could talk about his raft of legislative achievements or his resuscitation of the national mood or his savvy promise to engage in “bold persistent experimentation.” We could talk about the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a regional energy project that revolutionized the countryside by bringing power to neglected communities. At the same time it does help put President Trump’s accomplishments into some kind of historical context. The list that follows of the five presidents with the best first 100 days and the five with the worst reveals how arbitrary - and yes, how ridiculous - the standard really is. So he took to the radio, touted the success of his first 100 days, and in the process created an albatross for each of his successors, who found themselves on an artificial, and impossible, timetable. Looking back at the first few months of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt liked what he saw: the Federal Emergency Relief Act was getting aid to the poor and unemployed, the Civilian Conservation Corps was creating new jobs, the Agricultural Adjustment Act was helping stabilize farm prices. The only president who ever really benefited from the 100-day benchmark is the one who invented it. Politicians will never dump it, because in the middle of a campaign it’s too tempting to reel off a wish list for their first days in the White House. Journalists will never dump the convention, because it’s such an easy hook. The habit of weighing a president’s success 100 days in is a blight on the modern presidency, as pointless as it is impossible to uproot. When Donald Trump called the 100 days mark for judging a presidency a “ridiculous standard,” he was echoing what historians have said for years.
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