Fear and panic is what many people experienced in 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt entered his presidency, and 76 years later President Barack Obama takes on similar challenges in his own first 100 days.
President Roosevelt was the first president to have the nation pay close attention to the first 100 days of his presidency as he faced the nation’s worst depression of all time.
A quarter of the nation’s workforce was unemployed, many banking systems were shut down and no one was able to cash their hard-earned checks.
With this on his shoulders, Roosevelt still proceeded to take on the challenge of being president and made his first 100 days the most successful of all time by creating The New Deal.
Although the phrase First 100 Days was developed by the press and the media in 1933, it has been a tradition for many presidents to have their first 100 days scrutinized as it is to initially help their presidential performance.
The first 100 days of many presidents haven’t been as remarkable as Roosevelt’s, but some of our former presidents did have some accomplishments.
A current U.S. labor law that allows an employee to take unpaid leave due to a serious health condition is President Bill Clinton’s greatest accomplishment in The Family and Medical Leave Act that was signed in his first 100 days of office.
One of the largest tax cuts of the past two decades prior to his presidency was one of President George Bush’s greatest accomplishments. He also proposed the current public law No Child Left Behind Act, which requires all public schools to administer a statewide standardized test annually to all students.
April 29 marked the conclusion of President Obama’s first 100 days and many are agreeing that he is off to a good start as he is being compared to Roosevelt in successfully leading the country out of a domestic crisis.
Only a week after his own inauguration, Obama had a firm grasp of the nation’s economic crisis as his proposal for The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed and passed in Congress. The act included a $787 billion stimulus package plan that included increased federal spending, aid to states and tax reductions.
Obama has also notably signed into law the expanded State Children’s Health Insurance Program, that is said to provide benefits to four million working families. He has also signed the Ledbetter Law which requires equal pay for women.
But one of his recent promises to the nation that has everyone talking and questioning whether or not it will happen is Obama’s promise to withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010. Effectively, by December 31, 2011 all U.S. forces will be out of Iraq.
Even with Obama’s promise of ending an eight-year war on terror, his greatest accomplishment of his first 100 days is maintaining the faith and trust of many Americans.
According to Time Magazine, the combination of candor and vision and the patient explanation of complex issues was Obama at his best, and more than any other moment of his first 100 days in office, it summed up the purpose of his presidency.
