Franklin Delano Roosevelt set the bar for measuring the progress of a new president’s administration. He put it at 100 days.
Presidents had that amount of time to establish the pace and the tone of how they intend to govern, FDR determined. It’s been the benchmark ever since.
How has the 45th president done as his 100th day in office approaches? Not well at all.
That’s the view of almost every observer who gets paid to analyze such things. Donald J. Trump, though, sees it differently. Imagine that, if you can. He’s done a “fantastic” job, he’ll tell you. He’s assembled the “best” team ever created, he will insist. Why, he got a Supreme Court justice nominated and confirmed all within the first 100 days, he has said.
Trump has signed a lot of executive orders, too. He has rolled back many of the policies enacted by President Barack H. Obama. He’s repealed, for instance, regulations that sought to ensure clean air and water; Trump wants to bring more jobs back and he says those job-killing regulations just had to go.
Oh, but legislatively? What has the president done?
Umm. Not much, folks.
The effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act went down in flames. That would be his “first priority.” He got nothin’, man.
Absent a victory there, he then turned his sights on reforming the federal tax code. Now that effort appears stalled. Why? Because a few of his allies in Congress want to restart the ACA repeal/replace effort.
The president has failed to fill most of the key deputy Cabinet posts that need filling. Key Cabinet secretaries are lacking go-to men and women who serve as backstops for them.
The 100th day is less than two weeks out. Will the president be able to proclaim any significant legislative victory? I do not think so.
As one point of comparison, I believe I’ll look back eight years ago to the then-new presidency of Barack Obama. All he managed to do in the first 100 days was shepherd through Congress a $787 billion economic stimulus package that managed to rescue the nation’s collapsing financial system.
How would I grade the current president?
I’ll give him a D-minus. The only thing — in my view — that keeps him from failing outright is that missile strike on the Syrian government.