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Trump first one hundred days7/6/2023 The New York Times expected that Kennedy would "move swiftly. After the 1960 election, there was "talk all over town about 'another Hundred Days,'" according to Richard Neustadt, an aide to President-elect John F. Schlesinger's book quickly shaped public opinion. – to breathe new life into the “hundred days.” The second volume of his history of the Roosevelt presidency, The Coming of the New Deal (1958), exalted FDR's first three months as "a period of intense drama and prodigious legislation" that restored national confidence. It took a Harvard historian – Arthur Schlesinger Jr. His early performance, one critic complained in April 1953, was "spasmodic." At the same time, a New York Times columnist conceded that the benchmark was a "synthetic event." Eisenhower took office in 1953, some of his supporters also promised an FDR-style blitz to reverse the New Deal. "The first 100 days make him look like a minor league statesman." "He oversold himself," one journalist complained in April 1949. But harsh appraisals followed when Congress foiled Truman's plans. with the idea that the first 100 days were easiest" after the 1948 election. Aides to President Harry Truman promised "swift action. Gradually, it became the expected approach for newly-elected presidents to take. The first hundred days proved the United States "had a government that could govern," wrote columnist Walter Lippmann three months later.ĭuring World War II, journalists coined a phrase – “legislative blitz” – to describe what Roosevelt had done. In June 1933, Senator Clarence Dill celebrated "these first 100 days" as "the greatest peaceful revolution in the annals of organized government." Roosevelt himself recounted the "crowding events of the hundred days" in a radio address in July 1933. Roosevelt to deal with the banking crisis gets underway. The House of Representatives comes to order on Maas the special session of Congress called by President Franklin D. The federal government gave aid to farmers and homeowners and established national programs for public works and emergency relief. Agricultural and industrial production was brought under federal regulation. The banking and securities industries were fundamentally restructured. The country was taken off the gold standard and a bank holiday was declared. That session continued until June 1933 – almost exactly one hundred days.Ĭongress passed fifteen major laws intended to pull the country out of an economic abyss in that timespan. Facing an unprecedented economic disaster, he immediately called an emergency session of Congress. Roosevelt was the last national leader to be inaugurated in March rather than January. The United States today is a more complex society, facing a different kind of crisis than in 1933 – a crisis that might actually be intensified by following FDR's path. More fundamentally, the comparison to 1933 is misguided. Experience has revealed it to be an unhelpful template for newly-elected presidents. Soon after election day, Senator Chuck Schumer declared that the first three months of a Biden presidency should "look like FDR's," delivering on a "big, bold agenda." Success in the Georgia senatorial races – and recovery of Democratic control in the Senate – has produced even more calls for FDR-style boldness.īut the lure of the hundred-day benchmark should be resisted. Yet many Democrats are pushing Biden to follow FDR's example. In December, he seemed to play down the idea of a legislative onslaught, proposing a more limited set of hundred-day goals tied to handling the pandemic. AP Photo / Andrew Harnikīut Biden has also tried to limit expectations about his first hundred days. During the 2020 campaign, he leaned toward New Deal-style boldness, telling journalists that challenges facing the United States might even "eclipse what FDR faced" and that there was an opportunity for "really systemic change." President-elect Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, speaks at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware on November 19, 2020. Now President-elect Joe Biden is wrestling with the benchmark. German chancellors, British prime ministers and French presidents have all been held to a standard invented in the early days of the American New Deal. White House advisors have railed against the benchmark for decades. And, in April, they are judged on their success in signing major new laws. Before inauguration day, new presidents are pushed to set audacious legislative goals for their first hundred days. It also set a benchmark for every new president since. Roosevelt's initiative transformed American life. He moved boldly, persuading Congress to adopt a barrage of laws within his first hundred days in office. Roosevelt became president of a nation in crisis.
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