Blame it on Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ever since the 32nd president persuaded Congress to act on a long list of his ideas for confronting the Great Depression during his first hundred days in office pundits scholars and journalists have paused to measure each new president by the same chronological yardstick.
Nearly every one of them has bristled at the arbitrary metric. John F. Kennedy so reviled the standard that when presented with the draft of a speech conceding that hed not be able to fulfill all his promises in a hundred days he is said to have angrily scratched out the 100 and replaced it with a 1000.
And the assessments of new administrations after just a hundred days typically say less about the president than about the nations expectations for him. New occupants of the Oval Office usually spend most of the period making hundreds of top-tier appointments getting to know some foreign leaders and trying to press their favorite proposals on Congress. None of them want their legacies to be evaluated by such relative baby steps. And sometimes the public is content to wait a while longer.
But in the case of Barack Obama who will mark his 100-day milestone on Wednesday the benchmark is being treated with unusual significance. As the first new president in eight years the first African-American president ever and a president called upon from the start to manage both a deep recession and two wars his every move has been guaranteed an intense level of attention and comparisons to FDR are more direct than most new presidents face.
Obama has in some ways invited even more of those comparisons with his multifaceted bursts of legislative regulatory diplomatic and rhetorical activity unrivaled since the New Deal dawned in the spring of 1933.
Hes persuaded Congress to spend more than a quarter-trillion dollars trying to jump-start the economy. On his own authority hes altered federal rules in areas ranging from stem cell research to the treatment of suspected terrorists. Hes launched efforts to help strapped homeowners refinance their mortgages sweep toxic assets" off bank balance sheets and shore up consumer credit markets. Hes set a timetable for ending the occupation of Iraq and set about recasting the American image in the world. And whenever theres been a lull hes given a speech or news conference designed to drive his agenda ahead.
One of the questions left lingering from the campaign was how bold will he be? There was tension between his language of conciliation and the substance of his agenda" said William A. Galston a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton. Now we know if he has to choose between audacity and conciliation hell choose audacity. And hell accept a greater measure of division as a result."
Yet for all his self-confidence and firmness in principles Obama has shown a tendency to seek a middle ground whether on the size of an economic stimulus package on his overtures to the communist government of Cuba or on whether to prosecute the Bush administration officials who authorized the most brutal interrogation techniques in an effort to maintain broad ad hoc coalitions.
He has consistent core principles but wants to make compromises around the edges to keep the maximum number of people on board to get things done" said Bruce V. Spiva a Washington attorney and law school classmate of the presidents. Hes always made the effort to make people feel like theyre being heard."
Thats one of the more widely made observations as scholars Obama associates and policy experts identify the defining characteristics of the 44th presidents initial approach to governing. After 100 days these four are emerging as the most prominent.
Our Problems Are Interrelated
Obama is acutely aware of the criticism that hes trying to do too much at once frequently saying he doesnt have the luxury of addressing the financial crisis and issues such as health care education or the environment one at a time. But thats more than simply a matter of being strapped for time while the country faces a collection of crises. More than most politicians Obama is highly sensitive to how interconnected the world is and how ill-equipped the United States government can be to respond to problems that cut across bureaucratic lines of authority from the drug trade to the credit crunch.
In Obamas view its impossible to deal with the economic crisis without fixing the banking system because one cant generate a recovery without liquid markets and access to capital. And he believes any recovery also is predicated on fixing the fastest-growing segment of the economy: health care. He also wants to curb Americas dependence on foreign oil. But he says he cant do that without also addressing climate change which in turn requires international cooperation and engaging the world with vigorous U.S. diplomacy.
Obama has shaped his White House to reflect this syncretic outlook appointing senior counselors with broad portfolios and five prominent czars" whose jurisdictions range across those of several departments. And when several of his first round of top-tier nominees stalled in the Senate the president seemed content to have the West Wing serve as the de facto government even if that led to a marginalizing of his Cabinet. The administration is already pursuing a sweeping overhaul of the health system without a secretary of Health and Human Services. Much of the direction is coming instead from the head of the White House budget director Peter R. Orszag an economist who has Obamas ear and possesses a thorough knowledge of health costs.
The penchant for tightly concentrated executive-branch clout is in line with recent trends in the American presidency. Theres been a fear of delegating too much to agencies that started during the conservative revolution and intensified after Hurricane Katrina" said Julian E. Zelizer a political historian at Princeton University. Like his immediate predecessors Obama wants decision-making focused on his inner circle. If hes successful he wont change this pattern."
Change Starts from the Top Down
During the transition Obama said hed be the one giving his administration thrust and direction. But it was unclear how much his concept of the presidency would be changed by his actual exposure to the job.
The past three months have shown that Obama is supremely confident in his ability to parse recommendations from his advisers and to be the decider" as George W. Bush famously put it. His intelligent and intense chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has helped Obama focus on the big decisions establish clear lines of authority balance a collection of big egos and ensure that dissenters in the White House get to state their case.
Obamas confidence in himself as a leader is at least as great as his campaign led us to believe" said Brookings Galston.
For evidence look no further than Obamas April 14 speech at Georgetown University which broke no new ground but conveyed in a tone of unswerving firmness that any recovery is predicated on building a new foundation for the U.S. economy and changing the political landscape.
Crisis Can Justify Sweeping Action
Obama came to office facing the worst economic crisis in six decades and on the heels of a highly unpopular predecessor. Hes wagered that the depth and complexity of the recession particularly the way it touches banking housing consumer lending and other aspects of everyday life have left public opinion malleable and highly responsive to bold leadership.
So far that bet appears to be paying off. Even though many Americans are ambivalent about some elements of Obamas recovery plan such as having the government pay lenders to reduce the monthly payments of homeowners who are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages a large majority believe he is doing everything he can to stop the slide. A survey of 1507 adults released last week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that while only 30 percent of self-identified Republicans support Obamas agenda 46 percent have a favorable opinion of the president personally.
The risky side of this bet is that the new president could be reading negative public opinion of Bush as an affirmation of his own boldest goals. If so he will have to recalibrate some the policy changes he takes on.
Critical to that assessment is how independent voters view the presidents expensive up-front social engineering and efforts to revive the economy. Experts say this groups patience with Obama could be short-lived if bailouts of automakers and the financial industry fail to bear fruit or at least produce the sense that the economy is improving.
There is a concern about overspending and Republicans are trying to tap it because they have to use whatever arrows are in their quiver" said Karlyn H. Bowman a senior fellow and public opinion expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The Pew Centers associate director Carroll J. Doherty sees parallels between that potential downside to Obamas agenda and the trajectory of Ronald Reagans first year in office when unemployment rose from 7.5 percent to 8.3 percent. Though Reagan enjoyed a rosy honeymoon by the fall of 1981 most Americans lost faith in his economic policies sending the presidents popularity ratings on a long and sustained slide.
There are some signs independents are getting nervous" Doherty said. That is where his popularity has a chance of softening. He has no difficulties with the Democratic base."
Talent Will Win Out
Obama has surrounded himself with a collection of accomplished advisers many with Ivy League credentials and experience in the Clinton administration. Comparisons with Kennedys Best and the Brightest" are inevitable but not just because of the collective brainpower and forceful personalities crammed into the West Wing.
Administration insiders and scholars say Obama like Kennedy appears less concerned with rank and position than some of his predecessors and has adopted an informal approach to gathering input. He insists on hearing from everyone in the room to make sure he is not rendering decisions in a bubble. The approach sometimes conveys a sense of fluidity or even disorder within the White House.
Obamas campaign was idealistic and firmly rooted and made you lose sight of the fact hes pragmatic and not stuck on one way to reach his objectives" said Princetons Zelizer. At times he seems torn between what to do and on foreign policy you see his approach is to feel his way around. But hes not allowing advisers to dictate what he does at this point."
But by relying on himself as the ultimate filter Obama invites speculation about whether he can withstand the crush of daily business and continue to find the time to pore over memorandums and briefing books and think before he acts. White House veterans such as Galston say the temptation to defer agenda items will become acute if Obama encounters a political crisis at home say Democrats splintering over his health care proposal or gets embroiled in a prolonged foreign policy crisis.
Spiva who worked at the Harvard Law Review when Obama was its editor believes that the presidents self-discipline and ability to project a sense of control have already helped him weather the brunt of the financial crisis. Ive never truly seen him get rattled by anything" he said. Im sure Democrats will fragment over big votes like they always do and he may not get some things through Congress but I just dont see him panicking."
Galston sees a great deal of self-control taking shape in Obamas presidency as well noting that he keeps juggling the agenda he campaigned to introduce while also incorporating more ad hoc challenges great and small. The combination of extraordinary circumstances and the skills and experience he brings to the job are giving him an opportunity to get beyond what he calls the stale arguments and entrenched positions that have limited political possibilities over the past decade" Galston said.
Blame it on Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ever since the 32nd president persuaded Congress to act on a long list of his ideas for confronting the Great Depression during his first hundred days in office pundits scholars and journalists have paused to measure each new president by the same chronological yardstick.
Nearly every one of them has bristled at the arbitrary metric. John F. Kennedy so reviled the standard that when presented with the draft of a speech conceding that hed not be able to fulfill all his promises in a hundred days he is said to have angrily scratched out the 100 and replaced it with a 1000.
And the assessments of new administrations after just a hundred days typically say less about the president than about the nations expectations for him. New occupants of the Oval Office usually spend most of the period making hundreds of top-tier appointments getting to know some foreign leaders and trying to press their favorite proposals on Congress. None of them want their legacies to be evaluated by such relative baby steps. And sometimes the public is content to wait a while longer.
But in the case of Barack Obama who will mark his 100-day milestone on Wednesday the benchmark is being treated with unusual significance. As the first new president in eight years the first African-American president ever and a president called upon from the start to manage both a deep recession and two wars his every move has been guaranteed an intense level of attention and comparisons to FDR are more direct than most new presidents face.
Obama has in some ways invited even more of those comparisons with his multifaceted bursts of legislative regulatory diplomatic and rhetorical activity unrivaled since the New Deal dawned in the spring of 1933.
Hes persuaded Congress to spend more than a quarter-trillion dollars trying to jump-start the economy. On his own authority hes altered federal rules in areas ranging from stem cell research to the treatment of suspected terrorists. Hes launched efforts to help strapped homeowners refinance their mortgages sweep toxic assets" off bank balance sheets and shore up consumer credit markets. Hes set a timetable for ending the occupation of Iraq and set about recasting the American image in the world. And whenever theres been a lull hes given a speech or news conference designed to drive his agenda ahead.
One of the questions left lingering from the campaign was how bold will he be? There was tension between his language of conciliation and the substance of his agenda" said William A. Galston a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton. Now we know if he has to choose between audacity and conciliation hell choose audacity. And hell accept a greater measure of division as a result."
Yet for all his self-confidence and firmness in principles Obama has shown a tendency to seek a middle ground whether on the size of an economic stimulus package on his overtures to the communist government of Cuba or on whether to prosecute the Bush administration officials who authorized the most brutal interrogation techniques in an effort to maintain broad ad hoc coalitions.
He has consistent core principles but wants to make compromises around the edges to keep the maximum number of people on board to get things done" said Bruce V. Spiva a Washington attorney and law school classmate of the presidents. Hes always made the effort to make people feel like theyre being heard."
Thats one of the more widely made observations as scholars Obama associates and policy experts identify the defining characteristics of the 44th presidents initial approach to governing. After 100 days these four are emerging as the most prominent.
Our Problems Are Interrelated
Obama is acutely aware of the criticism that hes trying to do too much at once frequently saying he doesnt have the luxury of addressing the financial crisis and issues such as health care education or the environment one at a time. But thats more than simply a matter of being strapped for time while the country faces a collection of crises. More than most politicians Obama is highly sensitive to how interconnected the world is and how ill-equipped the United States government can be to respond to problems that cut across bureaucratic lines of authority from the drug trade to the credit crunch.
In Obamas view its impossible to deal with the economic crisis without fixing the banking system because one cant generate a recovery without liquid markets and access to capital. And he believes any recovery also is predicated on fixing the fastest-growing segment of the economy: health care. He also wants to curb Americas dependence on foreign oil. But he says he cant do that without also addressing climate change which in turn requires international cooperation and engaging the world with vigorous U.S. diplomacy.
Obama has shaped his White House to reflect this syncretic outlook appointing senior counselors with broad portfolios and five prominent czars" whose jurisdictions range across those of several departments. And when several of his first round of top-tier nominees stalled in the Senate the president seemed content to have the West Wing serve as the de facto government even if that led to a marginalizing of his Cabinet. The administration is already pursuing a sweeping overhaul of the health system without a secretary of Health and Human Services. Much of the direction is coming instead from the head of the White House budget director Peter R. Orszag an economist who has Obamas ear and possesses a thorough knowledge of health costs.
The penchant for tightly concentrated executive-branch clout is in line with recent trends in the American presidency. Theres been a fear of delegating too much to agencies that started during the conservative revolution and intensified after Hurricane Katrina" said Julian E. Zelizer a political historian at Princeton University. Like his immediate predecessors Obama wants decision-making focused on his inner circle. If hes successful he wont change this pattern."
Change Starts from the Top Down
During the transition Obama said hed be the one giving his administration thrust and direction. But it was unclear how much his concept of the presidency would be changed by his actual exposure to the job.
The past three months have shown that Obama is supremely confident in his ability to parse recommendations from his advisers and to be the decider" as George W. Bush famously put it. His intelligent and intense chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has helped Obama focus on the big decisions establish clear lines of authority balance a collection of big egos and ensure that dissenters in the White House get to state their case.
Obamas confidence in himself as a leader is at least as great as his campaign led us to believe" said Brookings Galston.
For evidence look no further than Obamas April 14 speech at Georgetown University which broke no new ground but conveyed in a tone of unswerving firmness that any recovery is predicated on building a new foundation for the U.S. economy and changing the political landscape.
Crisis Can Justify Sweeping Action
Obama came to office facing the worst economic crisis in six decades and on the heels of a highly unpopular predecessor. Hes wagered that the depth and complexity of the recession particularly the way it touches banking housing consumer lending and other aspects of everyday life have left public opinion malleable and highly responsive to bold leadership.
So far that bet appears to be paying off. Even though many Americans are ambivalent about some elements of Obamas recovery plan such as having the government pay lenders to reduce the monthly payments of homeowners who are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages a large majority believe he is doing everything he can to stop the slide. A survey of 1507 adults released last week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that while only 30 percent of self-identified Republicans support Obamas agenda 46 percent have a favorable opinion of the president personally.
The risky side of this bet is that the new president could be reading negative public opinion of Bush as an affirmation of his own boldest goals. If so he will have to recalibrate some the policy changes he takes on.
Critical to that assessment is how independent voters view the presidents expensive up-front social engineering and efforts to revive the economy. Experts say this groups patience with Obama could be short-lived if bailouts of automakers and the financial industry fail to bear fruit or at least produce the sense that the economy is improving.
There is a concern about overspending and Republicans are trying to tap it because they have to use whatever arrows are in their quiver" said Karlyn H. Bowman a senior fellow and public opinion expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The Pew Centers associate director Carroll J. Doherty sees parallels between that potential downside to Obamas agenda and the trajectory of Ronald Reagans first year in office when unemployment rose from 7.5 percent to 8.3 percent. Though Reagan enjoyed a rosy honeymoon by the fall of 1981 most Americans lost faith in his economic policies sending the presidents popularity ratings on a long and sustained slide.
There are some signs independents are getting nervous" Doherty said. That is where his popularity has a chance of softening. He has no difficulties with the Democratic base."
Talent Will Win Out
Obama has surrounded himself with a collection of accomplished advisers many with Ivy League credentials and experience in the Clinton administration. Comparisons with Kennedys Best and the Brightest" are inevitable but not just because of the collective brainpower and forceful personalities crammed into the West Wing.
Administration insiders and scholars say Obama like Kennedy appears less concerned with rank and position than some of his predecessors and has adopted an informal approach to gathering input. He insists on hearing from everyone in the room to make sure he is not rendering decisions in a bubble. The approach sometimes conveys a sense of fluidity or even disorder within the White House.
Obamas campaign was idealistic and firmly rooted and made you lose sight of the fact hes pragmatic and not stuck on one way to reach his objectives" said Princetons Zelizer. At times he seems torn between what to do and on foreign policy you see his approach is to feel his way around. But hes not allowing advisers to dictate what he does at this point."
But by relying on himself as the ultimate filter Obama invites speculation about whether he can withstand the crush of daily business and continue to find the time to pore over memorandums and briefing books and think before he acts. White House veterans such as Galston say the temptation to defer agenda items will become acute if Obama encounters a political crisis at home say Democrats splintering over his health care proposal or gets embroiled in a prolonged foreign policy crisis.
Spiva who worked at the Harvard Law Review when Obama was its editor believes that the presidents self-discipline and ability to project a sense of control have already helped him weather the brunt of the financial crisis. Ive never truly seen him get rattled by anything" he said. Im sure Democrats will fragment over big votes like they always do and he may not get some things through Congress but I just dont see him panicking."
Galston sees a great deal of self-control taking shape in Obamas presidency as well noting that he keeps juggling the agenda he campaigned to introduce while also incorporating more ad hoc challenges great and small. The combination of extraordinary circumstances and the skills and experience he brings to the job are giving him an opportunity to get beyond what he calls the stale arguments and entrenched positions that have limited political possibilities over the past decade" Galston said.
