The term has been an unreliable indicator for presidential success; Nixon’s public-relations strategy.
So great were the hopes for the launch of John F. Kennedy’s presidency that even before his inauguration, the president-elect was griping about the pressure he felt to work magic. “I’m sick and tired of reading how we’re planning another ‘hundred days’ of miracles,” Kennedy complained to his chief aide, Ted Sorensen, as they composed the inaugural address. “Let’s put in that this won’t all be finished in a hundred days or a thousand.”
JFK knew that the hundred-day yardstick for measuring presidential progress was as misleading as it is ubiquitous. The roundness of the number, though aesthetically seductive, is arbitrary; and while the short time span suggests swift, purposeful action, it really means that newcomers to the office will usually be too green to demonstrate true mastery.
Knowing this, Kennedy and Sorensen inserted into his speech its famous “thousand days” line. For good measure, they added an even bigger caveat, warning that the new administration probably wouldn’t meet its goals “even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.” Talk about lowering the bar!
FDR’s first hundred days in office were a flurry of activity, with 15 major bills signed into law. Later presidents have aspired to match his record.
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And yet if Kennedy hoped to lessen expectations for his first hundred days, he failed. By April, the hype continued apace. Sorensen was dispatched to draft a memo showing how Kennedy’s accomplishments stacked up favorably next to those of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
Given the crises that Barack Obama faces, he might do well to lower the bar himself. With April 30 looming, he has managed, to his credit, to pass a stimulus bill (albeit through rougher waters than he hoped), roll out a banking-crisis fix (with fewer details than Wall Street hoped) and propose a mortgage solution (with less money than everyone hoped). He’s signed a few ballpoint-ready Democratic bills like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and issued executive orders closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and overturning the anti-abortion “gag rule” for family-planning centers overseas.
A lot of people are still expecting more. In his speech before Congress last month, Obama promised initiatives to tap new sources of domestic energy, contain global warming, invest in education and toughen financial regulations — not to mention the rather large matter of health-care reform. The hundred days is surely, as historian Arthur Schlesinger once said, a “trap.”
The “hundred days” term dates back to 1815, when in an interval of that length Napoleon escaped from his exile on Elba, rallied the French army and briefly restored his rule until his defeat at Waterloo. The term became a catchphrase in 1933, when people used it to marvel at the torrent of actions that Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented on assuming the presidency.
FDR’s hundred days astonished observers then and now. From the Civilian Conservation Corps to the National Industrial Recovery Act, from banking reform to emergency relief, 15 major bills were introduced and signed into law. That was a staggering feat, but FDR did much more: an unprecedented bank holiday; the historic departure from the gold standard; the creation of federal bodies like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and dynamic new leadership expressed most famously through his Fireside Chats.
Most impressive was the incomparable sense of urgency that muted serious political opposition. When FDR called Congress into session five days after his inauguration to pass the banking bill, House Republican leader Bertrand Snell urged his party to vote yes, despite not having read it. “There is only one answer to this question, and that is to give the president what he demands,” he said. It sailed through the House unchallenged — no vote was recorded — and even in the dilatory Senate it passed 73-7.
FDR’s display of executive power spurred other presidents to try to match his performance, and a few notched notable achievements. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush passed mammoth tax cuts. After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson put civil rights back on the agenda, ramming the historic 1964 bill through the House within a hundred days — though it took extra months to get past the Senate’s hostile Southern barons. And the interval after LBJ’s second inauguration, in 1965 — which saw the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the groundwork laid for Medicare and the Voting Rights Act — was even more remarkable.
But FDR’s record, like Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, is unlikely to be equaled anytime soon. As much as FDR’s distinctive political gifts, the unique circumstances of the Depression made his success possible. Today’s crises, however severe, pale next to those of the early 1930s, when unemployment hit 25% and thousands of banks failed. In that sense, Obama should be glad that he lacks the opportunity to better FDR’s record — and so should we all. It’s the insuperability of Roosevelt’s hundred days that has confirmed it as the benchmark to which later presidents aspired.
Of course, given the expectations now attached to the term, presidents focus on shaping not just policy but perceptions. In 1965, LBJ reminded his congressional liaison, Larry O’Brien, that if he could “jerk out every damn little bill you can,” then “you’ll have the best hundred days. Better than he did!…if you’ll just put out that propaganda…that they’ve done more than they did in Roosevelt’s hundred days.”
Richard Nixon thought similarly. He had a bunch of his advisers form a “Hundred Days Group” to figure out how to sell the idea that his administration was a hive of activity, while trying, as he said, to get him “off the hook on quantity of legislation being the first measure of success.”
Reagan improved upon Nixon’s public-relations efforts. In late 1980, his aides prepared a briefing book that analyzed how presidents from FDR onward had fared in their opening days, hoping to discern lessons. By 1992 Bill Clinton was promising during his campaign, “I’ll have the bills ready the day after I’m inaugurated, I’ll send them to Congress, and we’ll have a hundred-day period. It will be the most productive period in modern history.” The boast proved impossible to fulfill. A few important measures such as the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act followed, but nothing Rooseveltian.
These presidents weren’t wrong to think that their first hundred days would matter. Public opinion turns sharply in a president’s favor when he’s elected, and most new leaders enjoy a honeymoon that they can extend with the right mix of policy and politics. Normally, Congress perceives that the public is rooting for a new president to triumph, and its members mute or calibrate their opposition. In our image-centered politics, widely touted perceptions can be self-fulfilling. A successful hundred days can strengthen a president’s hand, and a weak debut can foster the impression of amateur hour.
For all that, the hundred-day yardstick remains faulty. It places too much emphasis on easily quantifiable early achievements, directing attention to the number of laws passed. Passing laws isn’t necessarily the best indicator of a strong presidency. When a president’s party controls the Congress, it’s easy for him to sign bills that were queued up before he arrived — something that may hearten his supporters but doesn’t attest to great vision or legislative prowess.
Many things can matter more than laws getting passed. Behind Eisenhower’s lackluster debut — he sent no domestic program to Congress — lay an important bureaucratic reorganization and a review of national security strategy that led to his “New Look” foreign policy. The Bay of Pigs fiasco defined Kennedy’s first months, as his forthright acceptance of responsibility for the botched invasion turned a disaster into a bounce in the polls. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia and his secret wiretaps were of greater consequence than any legislative action. Gerald Ford was a rare president who did define his term in office in his first hundred days — by pardoning Nixon.
A president may also have a successful hundred days due to events outside his control. Reagan was struggling to pass his tax cuts when John Hinckley’s bullets landed him in the hospital. The outpouring of sympathy, aided by Reagan’s winning bedside humor, buoyed his popularity and helped him win a big victory. But that success didn’t foreshadow any continued mastery of Congress; his relations with the Democratic House and, later, the Senate would deteriorate.
The main reason that the hundred days are an unreliable indicator of future performance is the same reason we watch them so closely: They constitute the period in which the public is just getting to know the new president, and in which the president is just getting to know his new job. New presidents tend to be clueless about governing. Even running a large state can’t prepare them for the responsibilities, attention or demands to act quickly — just as they need to find their footing. (FDR’s term hardly defined his legacy; many of his greatest achievements came later.) Sizing up presidents based on their hundred days is like judging a rookie from his first cuts in spring training.
David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, is the author of “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image.”
Corrections & Amplifications
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush passed large tax cuts after their first 100 days in office. A previous version of this article incorrectly implied that the tax cuts occurred within that period.
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Underachievers
Some presidents whose time in office got off to a shaky start. —Juliet Chung
Martin van Buren (1837-1841)
Just two weeks after President van Buren took office, the panic of 1837, in which hundreds of banks and thousands of businesses failed, began. His plan to address the crisis never cleared Congress. Though the panic subsided by 1838, voters in the Democratic president’s home state of New York voiced their displeasure by ousting state Democrats from power.
William Henry Harrison (1841)
The ninth president didn’t make it to 100 days, dying just a month into office. At 68 years old, President Harrison was then the oldest man to be elected to the presidency. He became ill in late March with a severe cold that turned into pneumonia, and was the first president to die in office.
James Buchanan (1857-1861)
President Buchanan roiled his party shortly into his term over the issue of slavery. Bowing to pressure from the South, he recommended to Congress that Kansas be admitted to the Union with a constitution that allowed slavery. Congress rejected the constitution and Kansas remained a territory. The furor over Kansas eventually split members within his own Democratic party, and opened the way for a Republican victory in 1860.
Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
The task of handling Reconstruction fell to the 17th president after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. He quickly alienated congressional Republicans with his lenient terms for the reincorporation of Southern states into the Union. His struggles with Congress continued, and the House of Representatives later voted to impeach President Johnson. He was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate in 1868.
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
Though President Carter enjoyed Democratic majorities in Congress when he came into office, he did little to reach out to Congressional leaders–sometimes canceling projects in the districts of members whose support he needed for his legislative program. His flagship economic stimulus bill eventually passed, but in diluted form. Despite his poor Congressional relations, his popularity among Americans was still high after his hundred days.
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