Finneran: The 100 Days War

Friday, April 28, 2017

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Can we stipulate that the “100 days” measuring test for newly-elected Presidents is reflective of woeful civic ignorance?

This is America. We do not have royal edicts. We do not have Sun-kings, God-kings, or Emperors. We have Presidents, constrained by a Constitution and occasionally constrained by a balky Congress or balky judges.

Let’s further stipulate that there is a steep learning curve for Presidents, a curve with a lot more than a mere 100 days duration. I suspect that Donald Trump, once upon a time as a New York real estate developer, took a lot more than one hundred days to learn his craft. The same holds true for Donald Trump as President. He’s learning on the job and that is not the end of the world.

Indeed, his three predecessors in office---Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton---had steep learning curves themselves, as all came into the office hampered by outsized egos and limited national experience. None of them lived up to their self-proclaimed 100 days’ goals. Nor did they achieve the majority of their self-proclaimed legacy agendas. Remember those balky Congressional folks and those balky judges? They do not disappear.............

We continue to witness the collision of rhetoric and reality, a collision anticipated and intended by the wise folks who wrote that Constitution. May such collisions long continue, for no civically sentient human being would want to live under the thumb of one all-powerful person. Diffusion of power is a healthy tonic for any group of self-governing beings.

I suspect that the nation’s obsession with “the first 100 days” standard comes from the Roosevelts. First Teddy, then Franklin. By all accounts, Teddy was a physical dynamo as well as a dramatist. He craved physical action and robust oratory and it seems likely that he bulled at least some of the journalists of his era into thinking that his oratory was the equivalent of action. Thus a few months of forceful announcements might have left many observers with the impression of achievement.

Franklin Roosevelt’s early days as president were crammed with the various challenges of the Depression. Foremost among these challenges was a run on the banks as the general public panicked about losing their meager savings to a series of bank failures. Invoking some “emergency powers”, FDR declared a bank holiday and then pressured a not-so-balky Congress into passing major banking reform legislation. Other crises cascaded upon Roosevelt and he took advantage of the nation’s desperate desire for change. Circumstances dictated that his first one hundred days were indeed impressive for their sense of empathy, action, and achievement.

Yet that is not the yardstick by which to measure any President. In fact, history is not so kind in its judgements about FDR’s economic policies. Today he is more favorably viewed for his wartime leadership than for his economic theories.

It is true that President Trump’s rhetoric has been overblown and that he has miscalculated a few equations. He will either learn some lessons and gain some credibility or he will lose some power. He could consult Barack Obama about that. A mere two years after Obama’s historic 2008 election, buoyed by initial goodwill, standing in complete political control, and supremely confident of his abilities, he got slaughtered in the 2010 mid-term elections and he never really recovered.

Trump’s most significant accomplishment in these first one hundred days has been the nomination and confirmation of Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In the end, Trump will need to do more, much more than that to be judged an effective President.

One hundred days into a 1,461 day term is not predictive of anything. Stay calm and stay tuned.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

Finneran: The 100 Days War

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