What past presidents (other than FDR) has Obama emulated or borrowed from in his first 100 days in office?
Copyright © 2008 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
What past presidents (other than FDR) has Obama emulated or borrowed from in his first 100 days in office?
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monday 4/27Jeffrey Goldberg/
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Copyright © 2008 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Since his inauguration, Obama has generally spoken in modest, pragmatic tones, eschewing the revivalistic rhetoric of his campaign. But his ambitious, expensive policies and great skill at promoting them suggest a grander ambition: to become one of the handful of presidents who truly transformed American politics. Obama -- like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan -- has the good fortune to be succeeding a president who was an utter failure and whose party coalition is unraveling. Like each member of that quintet, he was elected with a campaign that resembled a mass movement. And, as at the start of those administrations, most Americans expect him to propose and carry out bold initiatives - and are ready to support him when he does. Obama is certainly aware that he has the opportunity to be what Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek calls a "reconstructive" president. But he is intelligent enough to realize he has a better chance of achieving that goal if he describes himself merely as a problem-solver who dislikes partisan bickering.
There’s the coolness of Obama’s style that resembles JFK, in a sense that he seems to have a kind of ironic detachment from what's going on around him. And what I mean by that is: I remember when the whole flap occurred about whether there should be a new fleet of helicopters, and they decided they did not need a whole new fleet, and Obama said, "It seems to me the helicopter I have is pretty great," and then he added, "but then again, I've never had a helicopter before." It’s that ability to look at yourself from the outside in.
My husband used to tell a story about JFK in West Virginia. He went to some early breakfast rally when he was running for the presidency. It was very, very cold out, and the rally was very early, and absolutely nobody was there, and so he turned to my husband, the young campaign aide at the time, and said, "You know what, if I were these people, I wouldn't come to see me either, at this time, in this cold weather--let's go get some bacon and eggs." So that's sort of reminiscent of JFK.
In terms of the scope of his ambition and the desire to move on multiple fronts, in terms of legislative goals, at the same time, it's reminiscent of LBJ in 1965, because LBJ was told after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of '64, which desegregated the South, that he should just move slowly, then, to let the country absorb that huge change and go for some of the other goals he had one at a time, much as people are telling Obama. But instead, LBJ recognized, he thought, that there was a moment in time that the combination of people wanting to do something after the assassination of JFK and the victory that he had won in '64 meant that the momentum was there, and so he simultaneously laid the groundwork, in his second hundred days, for Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, federal aid to education, substantial immigration reform that let in all manner of non-European peoples to our country, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities, a whole series of huge and lasting achievements -- and good that he did, because the war would soon come and turn the country in a different direction. But I think in understanding that you have to capitalize on those moments, Obama seems to have taken LBJ to heart in that way.
Lastly, and obviously, Obama has talked a lot about Lincoln being a mentor. We saw it especially when he put Hillary Clinton into the most powerful post, the Secretary of State -- even though some people thought she was more experienced and more celebrated than he, and that there would be clashing of egos, and what would happen with Bill Clinton. But Obama went right back to Lincoln and said that Lincoln put in his rivals who were more experienced, more educated, more celebrated than he, because he knew the country was in peril, he needed the strongest and most able people in the country, and he wanted those people by his side. By having Hillary there, and also by having (Joseph) Biden, also a rival, in as vice president, what has happened is that more importantly than having been rivals, both of them are strong enough to question Obama’s assumptions and argue with him and not simply tell him what he wants to hear. He’s also drawn from Abraham Lincoln by keeping Robert Gates, a Republican on as Secretary of Defense, making Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman, Secretary of Transportation, and reaching out, if it had worked, to Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and Gov. Bill Richardson, another rival, to have been in the Cabinet.
Response obtained via telephone 4/30/09
I think the Hundred Days made sense in 1933. To the extent that subsequent presidents feel duty-bound -- if only because of media stopwatches -- to generate their own version of a fast start out of the gate, it matters. But it's an unhealthy obsession, above all in the current economic and geopolitical climate, because it fosters the unrealisic notion that endemic problems lend themselves to instant solutions. Indeed, the counterintuitive hallmark of Obama's first three months in office -- complimenting the changes in budgetary priorities and the dramatic expansion of government's role generally -- is the president's use of the bully pulpit to educate the public in just how long success may take. Like Roosevelt and Reagan, he has earned the title of Great Communicator, not alone for his persuasive skills, but for the vision he is communicating. Equally important, even this early in his presidency, he appears determined to govern as if there is indeed a large and sensible center, willing to address fundamental issues too long caught up in the wedge-driving, spitball-throwing politics of distraction. Like FDR and Reagan, he brings to office an almost otherworldly sense of calm amid chaos, and a self-knowledge that puts his historical mandate ahead of the breathless, media-manufactured crisis du jour.
Every President is influenced by his predecessors, both positively and negatively, and Obama is certainly no exception. Perhaps the greatest influence on his presidency so far has been the felt need to repudiate much of the legacy of George W. Bush, a task he has already accomplished in significant measure -- relatively gently and without rancor. Identifying the positive influences is more complicated. We know that he has read widely about Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt; and given the range of crises he has created, that is certainly not surprising. I see a bit of Lyndon Johnson in him too -- not the personality, but the big ambitions and a reluctance to wait for the great achievements. I also see John Kennedy in some respects -- the cool, elegant demeanor; the ability to combine clear, matter-of-fact statements with powerful oratory. A hundred days is not much time to judge a president, and there will inevitably be more things to criticize as time goes on. But so far, he seems to have taken the best out of the predecessors he seems to like and to have avoided their weaknesses.