Lyndon Johnson delivered his first State of the Union speech on Jan. 8, 1964, within 100 days of Kennedy’s assassination, and in it he foreshadowed the national war on poverty. Though he didn’t give it a name until the next May, Johnson began promoting the “Great Society” programs that would establish his presidential reputation.
After his own inauguration a year later, with his political power at its peak, Johnson persuaded Congress to create an anti-poverty program, pass the Fair Housing and Voting Rights bills and create a program, now known as Medicare, for the elderly. He vigorously pursued his domestic goals of getting the government more deeply involved in education, the environment and the arts, but the gradual and painful progress of civil rights in the South and his decision to increase the military and economic commitment to anti-communist leaders in South Vietnam ultimately thwarted his presidency.
Richard Nixon’s presidency likewise came to a sour end, but during his first 100 days, he, like Eisenhower and Kennedy, focused on foreign affairs, especially the long winding down of the Vietnam War. Nixon, who became the only president to resign in disgrace, believed a competent cabinet could run domestic affairs while the president engaged in global issues.
Although not coinciding directly with 100 days, honeymoon periods for U.S. presidents often come to abrupt ends. Nixon’s, for instance, stopped with the blocked nominations of two Supreme Court hopefuls, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, ended his brief, happy period with the controversy of his granting a “full, free and absolute pardon” for Nixon for whatever offenses he committed as president.
Though Clinton took many lessons on what to avoid from Carter’s presidency, he might have avoided the protracted controversy over gays in the military by imitating his Democratic predecessor’s swift decision to pardon almost all Vietnam War draft evaders on his first full day in office. Later, Carter tried to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and came up with energy-saving legislation that included a steep tax hike on gasoline. Carter wanted to address energy problems seriously, but when he described his resolve as being “the moral equivalent of war,” he tagged his own program with the unfortunate acronym MEOW.
Ronald Reagan’s first three months in office reflected a deep desire for change in the opposite direction from Roosevelt, and he quickly pushed his advantage by proposing an economic plan that would become known as “Reaganomics,” a combination of budget increases to support defense programs along with deep cuts in social policy areas.
Contending that government was the problem, not the solution, Reagan was enormously popular, as were his tax cuts, but his vice president and successor, George Bush, paid the price for an out-of-control budget deficit.
Two events gave Reagan a tremendous impetus, the first on Inauguration Day, when the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran were freed and his first days in office became a double celebration. The second incident, when he was shot but survived an assassination attempt outside a Washington hotel, provided him a reputation for commitment and grit that won grudging admiration even from his political enemies. For a time Congress would deny Reagan almost nothing; only Roosevelt, his early role model, had experienced similar power.
Bush, on the other hand, didn’t take advantage of the opportunity that his prolonged goodwill allowed, and that became a metaphor for his presidency. There was no dramatic move, no major legislative package in his first months nor even in the euphoria after the Persian Gulf War. “I don’t even think in terms of 100 days because we aren’t radically shifting things,” Bush said one crisp spring morning in 1989 on the patio outside the Oval Office. Framed by wonderful clusters of red tulips, he said, as that marker approached, “We didn’t come in here throwing the rascals out to try to do something, correct all the ills of the world in 100 days.”
Actually, not even Roosevelt intended that. He campaigned as a conservative budget balancer, but in the four months after his defeat of Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt saw the nation sink even deeper into despair. On his Inauguration Day, major banks in New York and Chicago closed their doors, sending a new, feverish alarm through the economy.
His inaugural speech suggested-some say threatened-Congress that if it did not cooperate, he would take up broader powers normally accorded only a wartime president. His most remembered phrase is usually quoted in truncated form, but the full sentence makes him sound like a military commander: “So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Eleanor Roosevelt recognized they were at a moment in U.S. history unlike any the nation had ever seen, and she later commented that the reaction of the inaugural crowd was “a little terrifying.
“You felt that they would do anything,” she said, “if only someone would tell them what to do.”
After the bank holiday and holding the new powers given him by Congress, Roosevelt within two weeks signed the Government Economy Act to reduce federal salaries and reorganize departments. With repeal of Prohibition already under way and popular, Congress also legalized the sale of beer and wine with 3.2 percent alcohol content.
By the end of the month, Congress passed the Reforestation Relief Act, which created the Civilian Conservation Corps that would ultimately employ more than 2 million young and out-of-work men. By proclamation, Roosevelt took the nation off the gold standard in an attempt to strengthen the dollar at home and spur the economy. A few weeks later, in mid-May, Congress approved the Emergency Relief Act to provide money for states to help the unemployed.
Because of corruption within Chicago politics, one of Roosevelt’s top advisers, “Honest Harold” Ickes, who was Secretary of the Interior, was reluctant to earmark many big spending projects to the city. University of Illinois historian Perry Duis says relief aid was distributed, but overall, Chicago got pretty short shrift in the early Roosevelt days.
The massive government projects would come later as the city built the bridge and the infamous S-curve that linked north- and southbound Lake Shore Drive. Eventually, hundreds of miles of sewers and streets and sidewalks would bear the imprint WPA (Works Progress Administration).
Beyond infrastructure, the New Deal would provide Chicago with diverse cultural monuments, such as the mural at the Uptown branch post office and the Foreign Language Press Translations project now housed at the Chicago Public Library. Duis said researchers still use the 60 rolls of microfilm that hold the 125,000 translated foreign newspaper stories that date back to the middle of the 19th Century.
In addition, he said, the WPA was responsible for funding a whole collection on the history of African-Americans in Chicago, now at the public library’s Carter-Woodson branch. Research materials were assembled for and by Richard Wright, the famous novelist and author of “Native Son,” who was at the time a member of the WPA writers project.
To aid rural areas, the president signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and the Farm Mortgage Act, and, to this day, the Civilian Conservation Corps’ initials are imprinted on the cabins at White Pines State Park near Oregon, Ill.
In the following years, the administration of the AAA and aspects of several other New Deal programs were thrown out by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, but for the moment they created a sense of forward movement and a psychological boost for the nation. Those reversals, nonetheless, frustrated Roosevelt and led him to his aborted scheme to enlarge the Supreme Court with six new and theoretically sympathetic members.
The so-called “court-packing” attempt at the beginning of his second term consumed six months of controversy, and some believe it broke the last of the momentum Roosevelt had with a pliant Congress.
Roosevelt’s actions were more than just quick fixes, however, and the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority within the first 100 days not only provided jobs and electricity and development to a huge and isolated area but also gave the nation a model for big-government intervention.
At an economic conference in London, the Roosevelt administration opposed most other nations on the estabishment of a stable gold standard, while at home, Roosevelt pushed such legislation as the Truth-in-Securities Act and the Homeowner’s Loan Act, which provided about 1 million mortgage loans during the next three years.
Finally, on the last day of the congressional session, June 16, 1933, Congress passed the Farm Credit Act, to help farmers obtain mortgages, and another banking act, which set up a government corporation to insure deposits up to $5,000. It became known as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
That same day, as they prepared to leave Washington for a long recess, Congress passed and Roosevelt signed some of his first term’s most significant legislation, including the National Industrial Recovery Act, which created the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration. The “blue eagle” sign, which became familiar to an entire generation of Americans, was placed in store windows, and shoppers were encouraged to patronize those businesses that followed fair trade practices.
The 100 Days came to an end, and Roosevelt and the willing Congress could barely wait to get out of town. The president held a 4 p.m. news conference with reporters and then headed for the overnight train to Boston and a 20-day vacation along the New England coast.
