Franklin Roosevelt’s administration was the progenitor of the “First 100 Days” concept of the American presidency.
Sure, there are some French uses of that nice round number of days going back to the Napoleonic era, but in American politics, it is a product of frenetic activity in early 1933 as the New Deal programs began being adopted and implemented.
It is a standard that was applied to newly elected presidents with increasing frequency throughout the Twentieth Century.
It has seen its fair share of usage in the 21st century as well, with both Biden and Obama having the rather arbitrary timeframe applied to their early days in office.
Historians and political scientists have pushed back on the use of the “100 days” measuring stick, believing it creates unrealistic expectations about what presidents can, or should, accomplish in such a short period of time.
They point to the extenuating circumstances of the Great Depression as a reason for Roosevelt’s use of the term. They also cite John F. Kennedy’s assertion that some of the most noble and aspirational presidential goals can’t be met within 100 days, or even 1,000. Many of them contend it is undemocratic to expect a single official to be able to bring about the type of changes that are promised, anticipated, or both, during little more than three-months’ time.
We are not quite three weeks into a new presidential term. The new occupant of the White House seems to view the “100 days” as a personal challenge, rapidly churning out executive orders and threatening trade wars with countries traditionally seen as partners and allies.
The courts have, thus far, acted to put a stop to some of the worst excesses of those actions. The sheer impracticality of swift implementation has created boundaries for some of the others. Still, there has been a flurry presidential activity, even if mostly in the formal and ceremonial sense.
Despite the potential, with some of it already being unfortunately realized, for operational and humanitarian calamity, much of what has been done so far seems to be mostly for show. It’s easy to sign documents in front of cameras.
It’s harder to navigate the legal challenges those documents create. It’s one thing to establish tariffs; it is another to overcome the diplomatic complications they create and avoid the adverse economic effects.
Maybe that’s why the tariffs haven’t actually gone into effect, due to a series of postponements. The Trump administration is surely aware of the destructive effects they will have, and how ultimately unpopular they will be, and may be using tariffs as a prop in their political theater. Just like they did with the order intended to stop all federal grants and loans, they backed off the Canadian tariffs as soon as the first opportunity arose.
That opportunity, of course, came when the Canadian government said they were going to do something they’d been planning to do for months. Once Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau told President Trump they’d be making the additional investments in border security that they had already approved in December last year, there was a chance to claim victory and portray the Canadians as having folded.
In essence, the Trump administration claimed credit for something that had been in the works since before he took office and was very likely to happen regardless of any economic pressure that was, or was not, applied. What could have been accomplished with a polite phone call was, instead, accomplished with needless threats. But a phone call wouldn’t make these first 100 days look any busier.
Jason Nichols is a former District 2 Democratic Party chair, an instructor of political science at Northeastern State University, and former mayor of Tahlequah.