First Hundred Days

4 Key excerpts on "First Hundred Days"

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  eBook - ePub

  Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency

  Case Studies in Presidential Leadership

  • Maxmillian Angerholzer III, James Kitfield, Norman Ornstein, Stephen Skowronek, Maxmillian Angerholzer III, James Kitfield, Norman Ornstein, Stephen Skowronek, Maxmillian Angerholzer III, James Kitfield, Norman Ornstein, Stephen Skowronek(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  SECTION II The First Hundred Days Passage contains an image

  13. The First Hundred Days: Myth and Mystique

  by James P. Pfiffner

  A common yardstick for new presidents is the famed “Hundred Day” marker, but as Richard Neustadt pointed out in a previous edition of this text, the Hundred Days time frame is an unrealistic measuring rod. The term comes from the impressive spate of legislation that Franklin Roosevelt got through Congress to deal with the Great Depression in 1933. The ability of Roosevelt to push sixteen major bills through Congress over the period of 100 days was impressive, but he had the winds of the Great Depression and decisive congressional majorities at his back. That the New Deal marked a turning point in overcoming the Great Depression, made FDR’s hundred days of successful legislation historic. No other new president has faced a similar emergency with such large electoral majorities in Congress, although President Johnson had large Democratic majorities and President Obama faced a significant economic crisis.

  Despite the unique circumstances in 1933, the modern press and public apply the Hundred Days measuring stick to newly elected presidents whether they like it or not, and presidents cannot afford to ignore public expectations. Although each president faces different historical circumstances, common challenges confront presidents of both parties. A president’s political capital is at its highest level, for instance, during the first months of a new administration. As Bruce Miroff points out in this volume, even Franklin Roosevelt did not have a carefully prepared policy agenda but was experimenting with programs meant to relieve the immediate economic distress facing the country. More recent presidents, however, do not have that luxury; they must carefully prepare to take control of a larger government with programs of a much broader scope than in FDR’s day. New presidents now must orchestrate elaborate transition bureaucracies to prepare to take advantage of the narrow window of opportunity that opens up after the inauguration of each new president.

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  Presidential Power

  Theories and Dilemmas

  • John P. Burke(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Essentially, what matters are the first two years of a presidency. The biggest window of opportunity for setting things in motion opens in the early months of the new presidency, when prospects are most favorable for a new president. Ideally, key provisions of a president’s agenda come to fruition during the first year or early in the second. After that, a president’s power and situation worsen considerably, though some presidents have been able to adapt admirably to changed circumstances. Power wanes over the course of the first term, and I don’t see this changing in the future, unless the dynamics of midterm elections change or a new system for nominating presidential candidates is devised that replicates earlier times when campaigning began only during the election year. Both scenarios seem unlikely, so all future presidents need to be attuned to the varying opportunities and challenges presented by the internal rhythms of the first term and assess the best strategies for exercising power accordingly.

  Notes

  1. For a good introduction and critique of the notion of a presidential mandate, see Robert A. Dahl, “Myth of the Presidential Mandate,” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 3 (1990): 355-372.

  2. Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, Michael J. Malbin, Andrew Rugg, and Raffaela Wakeman, Vital Statistics on Congress (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2013), 5, 7,

  http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013/07/vital%20statistics%20congress%20mann%20ornstein/Vital%20Statistics%20Chapter%203%20%20Campaign%20Finance%20in%20Congressional%20Elections.pdf

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  3. On FDR’s transition to office and the first one hundred days, see Adam Cohen, Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).

  4. On Carter’s efforts, as well as other presidents through Clinton, see John P. Burke, Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), 17-94.

  5. On the role of the NSC adviser and its historical development, see John P. Burke, Honest Broker ? The National Security Advisor and Presidential Decision Making

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  The Coming of the New Deal

  The Age of Roosevelt, 1933–1935

  • Arthur M. Schlesinger(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Mariner Books

    (Publisher)

  1

  Prologue: The Hundred Days

  SATURDAY , MARCH 4, 1933. “This nation asks for action, and action now. . . . We must act, and act quickly.” The great mass before the Capitol, huddling in the mist and wind under the sullen March sky, responded with a burst of applause. The new President moved on to his conclusion. “In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.” Then the flourish of cavalry bugles, and the call to the inaugural parade, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his face still set and grim, entered his car to review the marchers from the stand in front of the White House.

  Through the country people listened to their radios with a quickening hope. Nearly half a million of them wrote letters to the White House in the next few days. People said: “It was the finest thing this side of heaven”; and “Your human feeling for all of us in your address is just wonderful”; and “It seemed to give the people, as well as myself, a new hold upon life.” “Yours is the first opportunity to carve a name in the halls of immortals beside Jesus,” wrote one. “People are looking to you almost as they look to God,” wrote another.

  But others could not suppress anxiety. Eleanor Roosevelt called the inauguration “very, very solemn and a little terrifying"—terrifying “because when Franklin got to that part of his speech when he said it might become necessary for him to assume powers ordinarily granted to a President in war time, he received his biggest demonstration.” What could this mean for the baffled PROLOGUE: THE HUNDRED DAYS and despairing nation? “One has a feeling of going it blindly,” she said, “because we’re in a tremendous stream, and none of us knows where we’re going to land.”1

  II

  In the morning the members of his cabinet had prayed with Roosevelt at St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House, Endicott Peabody of Groton conducting the services. Late in the afternoon, as the streets of Washington fell silent after the excitements of the day, the cabinet foregathered with him once again, now in the Oval Room of the White House. There they stood, a quiet, serious group, inexplicably brought together by the crisis:—Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, grave, pale and fragile; William Woodin, Secretary of the Treasury, dark with anxiety over the banking collapse; Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, with his square, stubborn face, and Henry Wallace, the Secretary of Agriculture, earnest and intent, and Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor, with her brisk, womanly determination; and, beside them, the political professionals, ready for anything, Attorney-General Homer Cummings, Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper, Postmaster-General James A. Farley, and the service secretaries Claude Swanson and George Dern. As Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo administered the oaths, precedents fell: never before had a cabinet been sworn at a single stroke, never before had the swearing-in occurred at the White House. Roosevelt, with a smile, called it a “little family party” and handed each his commission of office.

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  FDR

  Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America

  • Iwan Morgan(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  2 Chief legislatorFDR and the Hundred Days

  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s name is forever associated with the New Deal programme that embedded the liberal state at the heart of modern America’s development. He presided over the most productive period of governmental activism in US history, beginning with the unprecedented enactment of fifteen major laws in his First Hundred Days in office from March to June 1933.

  1

  No predecessor had hitherto pursued a legislative programme remotely comparable in scale over the entire course of his tenure, let alone at its outset. By the end of the Hundred Days, Roosevelt’s success in recommending, promoting and enacting his early New Deal measures had established him as the chief legislator of American government.

  Roosevelt introduced the term ‘New Deal’ into America’s political lexicon in his address accepting the 1932 presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In its peroration, he vowed, ‘I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.’ Breaking with tradition. FDR had flown to Chicago to accept the nomination in person, rather than waiting for a party committee to come to the gubernatorial mansion in Albany with news of his selection, thereby symbolizing that he would not be bound by outworn customs in the ‘unprecedented and unusual times’.

  2

  He had no idea that he was christening a political era in promising a ‘new deal’. When drafting the address, speechwriter Samuel Rosenman attached little importance to the phrase, which he may have derived from a series of articles that economist Stuart Chase had begun to publish in The New Republic on convention eve. Next day’s newspaper reports paid it little heed but Rollin Kirby’s editorial cartoon in the New York World-Telegram presciently depicted a farmer staring up in hope at a plane passing overhead with the words ‘New Deal’ displayed on its wings. The term quickly came to epitomize what Roosevelt stood for. As Rosenman reflected, ‘Within a short time it became a commonplace – the watchword of a fighting political faith.’3

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