100 Days in the Footsteps of F.D.R. and L.B.J.

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100 Days in the Footsteps of F.D.R. and L.B.J.

By SAM TANENHAUS
Published: May 2, 2009


In American politics, the symbolic and the concrete are seldom far apart. Consider the fanfare surrounding President Barack Obama’s 100th day in office.

On the surface it seemed a classic instance of what the historian Daniel Boorstin once described as a “pseudo-event,” an exercise in public relations masquerading as news. “The celebration is held, photographs are taken, the occasion is widely reported,” Mr. Boorstin wrote of such staged episodes.

The Obama administration itself took an equally jaundiced view at first. Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, promised that the 100th day, which fell on Wednesday, would be “not a ton different than the 99th.” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, called the milestone a “Hallmark holiday.”

But in the end the administration seized the moment, arranging a town-hall meeting for the president in a Missouri high school gym and then a prime-time news conference in Washington.

Yet buoyant displays of this kind serve a civic function. Many of the re-examinations of the most celebrated of 100-day periods, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in 1933, have noted that Americans felt better because they liked Roosevelt himself, even if they couldn’t be sure his policies would actually work.

The same appears to be true of Mr. Obama. His strong approval ratings seem to reflect hope in him at a time when the economic news continues to be bad.

In his news conference, Mr. Obama subtly emphasized the link with Roosevelt. His vow to build a “new foundation for growth” on the ruins of America’s collapsed banking and credit system, echoed Roosevelt’s promise of “a New Deal for the American people.”

In concrete terms Mr. Obama’s indebtedness to Roosevelt’s approach is just as direct. His decision to assert regulatory control over an anarchic marketplace parallels Roosevelt’s bold interventions. And Mr. Obama’s denunciations of investors who declined to back Chrysler rang with the same scorn Roosevelt heaped on the sinister “money changers” he blamed for the Great Depression.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/weekinreview/03tanenhaus.html