Measuring Obama by FDR's yardstick

If the first 100 days mean anything, the president is looking a lot like Franklin Roosevelt. But recent history shows a lot can change after the early days of a presidency.

By Doyle McManus

LA Times
April 21, 2009
News Analysis

If it seems arbitrary -- even unfair -- to take the measure of a new president after just 100 days in office, you can blame Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1933, with the nation in a financial meltdown, Roosevelt came to the White House and, with an enthusiastic Democratic Congress at his command, enacted a whirlwind of emergency legislation. There was a bank stabilization bill, unemployment relief and farm supports, stock market regulation, the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority -- and the repeal of Prohibition. It took FDR only 103 days to launch that first version of his New Deal, and the initial storm set a tone for the rest of Roosevelt's first term: constant action, bold experimentation, unprecedented expansion of the authority of the federal government.

Since then, journalists and political analysts have embraced the 100-day report card for new presidents. But for most leaders since FDR, the first three months have been an unreliable guide to the years that followed.

In 1993, Bill Clinton's 100 days were a chaotic period of trial and error, beginning with a stymied attempt to allow gays to serve openly in the military and ending with the defeat in Congress of a $16-billion stimulus bill (an amount that seemed high at the time). At this point 16 years ago, conventional wisdom held that Clinton would probably limp through a single term in office.

(More here.)