The first 100 days and the American presidency
By Alex Bregman
Why are the first presidential 100 days “a thing” in the first place?
Well, President Trump has a Democrat to thank for the high expectations of his first few weeks in office: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who came into office amid the worst economic decline in American history, the Great Depression.
From Day 1, Roosevelt demanded that the government needed to get to work — and fast!
By the way, FDR didn’t actually coin the term “the hundred days” until July of 1933, in one of his famous fireside chats, and he was talking about Congress’s first 100 days, not the president’s. Nevertheless, he set the bar high for all of his successors.
He got Congress to pass 15 major pieces of legislation in those dire first 100 days — and 76 bills in total.
No president has been as productive in those first months in office. But, then again, the nation has never been in such a domestic crisis since then either.
President Obama got congress to pass only 11 laws in his first 100 days. President George W. Bush signed just seven bills.
Why? More Washington gridlock. Some experts say having more subcommittees in Congress makes it harder to get things done, and, of course, there’s also more partisan rancor between Congress and the White House.
So what did President Trump outline for his first 100 days?
Among his promises: repealing and replacing Obamacare, funding a border wall, tax reform and investing in infrastructure, just to name a few. So far the president has yet to accomplish these goals.
As President Trump tries to do that and more, when it comes to the history of the first 100 days, at least you can say, “Now I get it.”
