Historians of European history use the phrase “100 Days” to refer to the 111 days between Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape from exile on Elbe to the time when King Louis XVIII was restored (again) to the French throne. Napoleon’s defeat in the Battle of Waterloo took place during this period. An interesting fact about the phrase “100 Days,” perhaps, but it is not relevant to how we in the United States use the phrase today.FDR’s First 100 Days Journalists and historians today refer to President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office as the benchmark for all subsequent U.S. presidents. Actually, the phrase referred to the time from when FDR called Congress into a special session on March 9, 1933, until Congress adjourned in mid-June of that year. The Roosevelt administration accomplished a lot in that time period: FDR outlined and got Congress to pass 15 major bills, most of the programs that came to be known as the “First New Deal.”Obama’s First 100 Days The press is full of stories about what President Barack Obama’s administration has accomplished in its first 100 days. It has become a tradition of journalists to write such stories about each new presidential administration regardless of how useful such summaries or analyses are. Some of the analyses are critical, such as one that appeared online today in the New York Post. Some, such as Lynn Sweet’s blog for
the Chicago Sun-Times, are sympathetic. Still others are somewhere in between, such as Gerald F. Sieb’s Wall Street Journal blog. Sieb says that Obama is a hard man to classify. He points out that some of Obama’s foreign policy is more popular among Republicans than Democrats. He cites the protectionist label on Obama despite the fact that Obama has been pushing free trade agreements made by the Bush administration. Also, he references Obama’s call for sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan than the previous administration had planned on. The Obama administration itself is playing down the importance of the first hundred days, calling April 29, 2009, a “Hallmark holiday.”Conclusion As an historian, I find it hard to sum up Obama’s first hundred days in office. We do not know which, if any, of the laws that he pushed and were passed by Congress are going to be effective. Despite a flurry of visits with foreign leaders, we are not sure what Obama’s foreign policy is going to be. Like most Americans, I am hopeful that things are going to get better with the country led by this president. But anything can happen, even unexpected events like the current swine flu outbreak.
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It is hard to think of a U.S. president who has done more to weaken his country on the world stage in such a short period of time -- and that includes the hapless Jimmy Carter. President Obama’s first 100 days as a world leader have been an overwhelming failure, a damaging mix of diplomatic gaffes and humiliating apologies for America’s past, combined with a naïve outreach to American-hating tyrants and despots, as well as an overwhelming indifference towards traditional allies, including Britain.
While the Anglo-American Special Relationship has been downgraded to a “special partnership”, the new president has been busy sending polite video messages to the Mullahs of Tehran, bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and having a cuddly chat with Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez. In little over three months, the fledgling president has also succeeded in jettisoning the War on Terror, alienating America’s intelligence services with the selective release of interrogation memos, while undercutting the armed forces with a series of threatened defence cuts.
There have been moments when the new administration has shown some backbone – the decision to withdraw from the farcical UN Durban Review Conference, the ordering of missile strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban positions inside Pakistan, the deployment of 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, for example. But these have been rare exceptions to an overall foreign policy that has projected weakness, indifference and even incompetence, unbefitting of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.
And what has Washington gained in return for its new approach? More sneering condescension from continental European leaders, a refusal to fight in Afghanistan from most of the NATO alliance, an increase in sabre-rattling from North Korea, an acceleration of Iran’s nuclear programme, a renewed assertiveness from Moscow, and an insulting book on the evils of Western imperialism as a gift from Chavez.
The new approach is the product of an American-Idol-style White House obsessed with spin and image at the expense of American power. There is, unfortunately, no Simon Cowell figure to tell the president that his performance doesn’t measure up. No matter how hard Obama tries to please his global audience and how much they superficially cheer, if there is no substance to the policy or the basic message is wrong, it simply won’t work.
The problem with promoting the person of the President as a stand-in for U.S. interests is that it leaves America vulnerable to the priorities of others. It is not all that difficult to get applause from foreign audiences when you embrace their priorities and criticize your own country. The hard part of leadership is getting others to follow when they are reluctant to do so. Except for some minor instances--or when Obama simply embraced already existing policies of foreign governments--he has gotten precious little for his efforts.
That is the main lesson from the first 100 days: It is time for President Obama to begin focusing on the hard work of protecting America and asserting U.S. leadership, not by trying to enhance his personal popularity abroad, but by cashing in on that popularity for the benefit of his country. He should stop pretending that our interests always coincide with others--as if America were merely the chairman of the board of international consensus--and start discerning more astutely when they do and when they do not. He is the President of all Americans, and he should start acting that way.
As a historian, I can see that.
Pranesh Gupta
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