15/4/2021 Why Biden's First 100 Days Are as Important as FDR's ESSAY The Most Vital 100 Days Since FDR Just like Roosevelt, Biden must show that government still works. BY MICHAEL HIRSH APRIL 12, 2021, 10:21 AM Biden’s first 100 days This article is part of Foreign Policy’s ongoing coverage of U.S. President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, detailing key administration policies as they get drafted—and the people who will put them into practice. Did any U.S. president ever have a more ominous first hundred days? Fearing assassination, he slunk into Washington under the cover of night, in disguise, and registered without public notice at a hotel near the White House. No sooner had he taken the oath of office than he began to violate it, suspending habeas corpus and arresting dissidents without trial. Meanwhile, no matter what he tried, the nation literally fell apart around him. Yet that president, Abraham Lincoln, is today considered one of America’s greatest—the greatest in the eyes of many historians. That in turn suggests that the first hundred days metric is hardly an accurate measure of presidential success. First used by Franklin D. Roosevelt three score and eight years after Lincoln’s death—when FDR rushed through emergency legislation in record time to defeat the Great Depression—many historians today disdain it as largely a media contrivance designed to conjure headlines. But neither can we dismiss the hundred days standard entirely, especially now, with Joe Biden replacing Donald Trump at a time of multiple crises: a pandemic that has cost more than half a million American lives, a rolling By usicnga tthais cwleybssitme, y oouf ag nreae ttou oruar uls de oifs caoosktieesr. Tsh ies uxsae cineclurdbeas pteersdon balyizat ciolni mof caontteen ct anhda adnsg, ean,d a trnaf fiec canoalnytoicsm. Ryeview our Privacy Policy for more information. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/12/the-most-vital-100-days-since-fdr/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=32140&utm_term=Flashpoints… 1/10 15/4/2021 Why Biden's First 100 Days Are as Important as FDR's still bleeding millions of jobs, and a foreign policy that remains inchoate and aimless as America’s global leadership is in doubt. A number of prominent historians and political scientists who study the presidency suggest that this period is different: that Biden’s first hundred days have mattered a great deal, perhaps as much as Roosevelt’s did in fighting the Depression. (FDR coined the term in July 1933, when he gave a radio address reflecting on “the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”) What the two share in common is the urgent need to show the American people and the world that, amid turmoil accompanied by widespread disillusionment with Washington, government can still work at the most fundamental level. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a president since Roosevelt who’s had a more important first hundred days,” said Sidney Milkis, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia. Milkis had in mind Biden’s many executive orders reversing Trump’s policies and his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, but he added that these actions also take place in a nation arguably “more divided now culturally, regionally, and on matters of American identity—who we are—than we have been since Lincoln and the Civil War.” In a way, Milkis said, Biden faces a more treacherous situation than Roosevelt: “There was no insurrection at the Capitol during Roosevelt’s tenure, and few people questioned whether he was the legitimate president.” Sean Wilentz of Princeton University also pointed to Trump’s trampling of the U.S. Constitution and postwar global system. “The whole status of the executive branch is in shambles, and you need to rebuild that quickly,” he said. “Most salient is the mistrust in the Justice Department, given the events of Jan. 6 at the Capitol. No modern president has inherited this kind of situation institutionally.” Against these high stakes, the consensus among nearly a dozen By usipngr tehis iwdebesnitet, iyaoul agerxeep teo orutrs u sien otf ecorovkiiees. wTheis dus ef oincrl utdhesi pse rasorntalicizatleio ni so ft chonatetn tB anid adens, an’s dfi trrafsfitc anhualynticds.r Reevdiew our Privacy Policy for more information. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/12/the-most-vital-100-days-since-fdr/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=32140&utm_term=Flashpoints… 2/10 15/4/2021 Why Biden's First 100 Days Are as Important as FDR's days have been mostly successful, even as he has failed to bridge the partisan gap left over from the bitterly divisive Trump years. Starting on his first day in office, Biden signed at least 50 executive orders, about half of them reversing Trump policies, including his withdrawal from the Paris climate pact, immigration policies, border wall construction, and the travel ban targeting Muslims. “I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” the new president said bluntly. (In fact, in his first two weeks in office, Biden signed nearly as many executive orders as Roosevelt—who still holds the record—signed in his entire first month.) Then, on March 11, Biden signed into law the giant COVID-19 relief package, passed on party-line votes in the House and Senate. It was perhaps the biggest job creation and anti-poverty program since the New Deal. His administration has also dramatically expedited the distribution of vaccines and announced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure rebuilding agenda that the 46th president deftly called the “American Jobs Plan.” As Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in late February, “Now is the time to be aggressive.” At his first news conference, on March 25, Biden himself invoked the hundred days standard, vowing “200 million [vaccine] shots in 100 days.” Most of all, experts agreed that the sense of urgency to fix the system is what most likens Biden to FDR. This frenzy of activity echoes FDR’s as he sought to reverse the laissez-faire approach of his own predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to the Great Depression. Richard Immerman, a presidential scholar at Temple University and former senior intelligence official under President George W. Bush, pointed out that both men also installed a “brain trust” of experts—for Biden, “a team that may be unparalleled in terms of their experience.” Despite a slow start in getting cabinet nominees confirmed—thanks in part to the impeachment trial of Trump in January and the former president’s refusal to concede and take part in a transition—Biden managed to install a series of longtime respected professionals to top posts. They include Lloyd Austin for defense secretary, Antony Blinken as secretary of state, and Janet Yellen as treasury secretary. Biden pledged that his attorney general, By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. This use includes personalization of content and ads, and traffic analytics. Review our Privacy Policy for more information. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/12/the-most-vital-100-days-since-fdr/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=32140&utm_term=Flashpoints… 3/10 15/4/2021 Why Biden's First 100 Days Are as Important as FDR's Merrick Garland, would be the nation’s lawyer, not the president’s, as Trump appeared to believe. Most of all, experts agreed that the sense of urgency to fix the system is what most likens Biden to FDR. “There are so many crises: the pandemic, an economy that in many ways will have fundamentally changed during it —and of course global warming, an existential crisis … which the previous administration did nothing about,” said Joseph Ellis, another well-known presidential historian. “Biden is doing the right thing by identifying those crises.” Despite Biden’s parallels to one of America’s greatest presidents, it takes far longer than a hundred days for any consensus on presidential success to form. Biden’s foreign policy, for example, has barely gotten off the ground, despite urgent issues such as Iran’s nuclear program and ending the “forever wars,” as he has pledged to do. Trying to reverse Trump’s immigration restrictions, he also faces a new crisis involving a surge of migrants at the southern U.S. border. By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. This use includes personalization of content and ads, and traffic analytics. Review our Privacy Policy for more information. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/12/the-most-vital-100-days-since-fdr/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=32140&utm_term=Flashpoints… 4/10 15/4/2021 Why Biden's First 100 Days Are as Important as FDR's People line up to receive potatoes in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1938 during the Great Depression. POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES People line up at a food distribution site in the Bronx on May 19, 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic. JOHANNES EISELE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES But Biden must confront structural, social, and political challenges that many presidents before him did not. Two decades ago, the great presidential historian Richard Neustadt famously denigrated the hundred days standard as bad history, arguing that FDR’s tenure was the exception because of the gravity of the crisis he faced, the incompetence of his predecessor to address it, and—crucially—his total control of Congress. FDR enjoyed large majorities in both legislative bodies and called Congress into emergency session until June 1933. Consequently, in the three months following his inauguration on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt was able to ram 15 major bills through a compliant Congress, including the Emergency By usiBnga thnisk wienbsgite A, yocut ag, trehe eto Noura utsieo ofn coaolk iIens.