Those who hoped Biden would produce a renaissance of bipartisanship have been disappointed too. That narrow focus is one of the reasons for Biden’s success (unlike Trump, whose attention span was notoriously short), but it has produced frustration among progressives who hoped for more help. Other Democratic priorities - immigration reform, gun control, a $15 minimum wage - have received moral support, but not much more. Here’s another way Biden’s restoration of New Deal-style government has been limited: The new president’s energy has focused relentlessly on four priorities - the pandemic, the economy, climate change and race relations. “We’ll know how durable this is when we see the fate of the infrastructure bill.” “These have been emergency measures, justified by the pandemic,” noted Elaine Kamarck, a Brookings Institution scholar of the presidency. Unlike FDR’s New Deal laws, its programs - notably the family tax credit that promises to cut child poverty in half - won’t last a single generation unless the president persuades Congress to extend them. More important, while Biden’s relief bill is enormous in terms of dollars, most of its emergency provisions are only temporary. But for all Biden’s unexpected boldness, his record doesn’t reach Rooseveltian standards.įDR passed 15 major pieces of legislation in his first 100 days Biden has passed exactly one. If Biden were simply being compared with his immediate predecessor, he’d be declared the winner of the 100-day race. And his approval in public opinion polls stands at about 54%, a higher level than his predecessor ever touched.
He has proposed a $2.3-trillion infrastructure plan. He promised COVID relief, and managed to push a massive $1.9-trillion bill through Congress without a vote to spare. His national security advisor resigned amid a scandal over secret contacts with Russian officials. He stripped federal funding from sanctuary cities, but that, too, was quickly challenged. The headstrong new president imposed a ban on immigrants and travelers from Muslim countries, but it was quickly reversed by federal courts.
None of those things happened, but Trump did outdo former holders of the office in one regard: producing unshirted chaos. Roosevelt, the last chief executive whose first three months were truly momentous.īut in recent times, the 100-day trope has also been taken seriously by presidents - including both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.ĭuring his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised that in his first 100 days he would repeal Obamacare, build a wall on the border with Mexico and persuade Congress to pass term limits. A president’s first 100 days are an arbitrary benchmark, a point of measurement journalists are fond of because it allows us to draw comparisons between the current officeholder and Franklin D.
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