50 Days Here, 100 Days ThereBy William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Friday 13 March 2009
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
- Franklin Delano RooseveltBarack Obama is less than 50 days away from becoming the twelfth American president to face the "First 100 Days" benchmark set by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The eleven presidents before Obama were all kicked in the pants by this highly subjective standard of performance, to varying degrees of severity - Truman got it the worst due to his proximity to the standard-creator, and due to his suddenly being put in charge of the Second World War, of course - and Mr. Obama will be faced with the same comparison come springtime.
What did FDR do in his first 100 days? Not much if you discount the New Deal; passage of the Emergency Banking Act reopened most Depression-shuttered banks in the country and creation of the FDIC stopped runs on those banks; passage of the Economy Act brought the budgetary chaos under manageable control; the Agricultural Adjustment Act brought farmers back from the brink with the creation of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which gave rise to such beneficial entities as the Resettlement Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Rural Electrification Administration and the Farm Security Administration; and by repealing the Volstead Act and ending Prohibition, Roosevelt and everyone else in the country could have themselves a legal drink while pondering how much had gotten accomplished in those first 100 days.
Pretty stiff competition for any president to live up to. The eleven presidents after FDR all pretty much failed to measure up, and Mr. Obama is in line to become the twelfth to fall short. There is no shame in this; it is an impossible benchmark to match, given the circumstances. Rather than debate the relative merits, or lack thereof, involved in the "First 100 Days" standard, let us instead take a few moments to do a little compare-and-contrast of recent presidential history. Three American presidents have been in office since 1993 - Clinton, Bush and Obama. How do their records stack up against each other?
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http://www.truthout.org/031309A