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Shades of FDR in Obama's first 100 days
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Published: January 13, 2009
WASHINGTON - As Barack Obama plans his first 100 days as president, he has looked for inspiration to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who raced through his early days in office, spurring Congress to act.
"I hope my team can emulate (FDR)...not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things, and experiment in order to get people working again," the president-elect told "60 Minutes" in November. He said he was reading a book about the New Deal president's first 100 days in office in 1933.
At the height of the Depression, Roosevelt used his first three-plus months in office to quickly push through Congress a series of reforms aimed at righting the economy.
Since then, the first 100 days of each administration have become a benchmark to track the progress of the new president.
Though presidential historians say it's an arbitrary - and in some ways unfair - measurement, they say Obama's early actions will set the tone for his administration and establish his priorities and leadership style.
"It's an unreasonable expectation that we put on all our presidents, just because it worked that way in 1933 for FDR. They shouldn't be held to that," said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked for several presidents.
Obama's advisers and outside observers say it is clear that fixing the economy and creating jobs will dominate his agenda in the early days, just as it did Roosevelt's.
His advisers are already working with Congress to shape an economic stimulus package that Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insist must pass by President's Day, Feb. 16. His estimated $775 billion plan proposes a mix of tax cuts, spending on infrastructure projects like roads, and other projects aimed to create jobs.
"Every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs," Obama said last week in a speech describing his economic agenda. "And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."
Other early economic priorities for Obama include reshaping the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and shoring up the troubled financial system. Acting on a request from Obama, President George W. Bush indicated this week that he planned to release the remaining $350 billion available under the bailout, a program criticized by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Working with a Democratic-controlled Congress will enable Obama to move more quickly on priorities than if Republicans dominated the House and Senate, congressional analysts said.
But one-party rule and a high approval rating does not mean Obama will be able to act unilaterally, analysts said.
Some Democrats in Congress have criticized his stimulus proposals. Pelosi has pushed Obama to repeal immediately Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest earners. Obama has indicated a desire to wait.
Beyond major economic initiatives, Obama has not yet fully laid out how he will spend the first months of his administration.
On the campaign trail, he said he would likely use the early days to begin pushing for an overhaul of the health care system, and start work on an exit strategy for Iraq. The transition team indicated this week that he would act quickly to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, though Obama cautioned that closing the prison would take more than three months.
Like many previous presidents, Obama has attempted to tamper expectations for his first 100 days in office.
"The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be more like the first thousand days that makes a difference," he told a Colorado radio station in an interview shortly before Election Day. "Most of the big challenges that we face, whether it's making college more affordable, or fixing our health care system so it works for everybody, or making sure that we've got a serious energy strategy, or winding down the war in Iraq, all those things are probably going to take longer than three months to complete."
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