![]() ![]() Roosevelt was the last national leader to be inaugurated in March rather than January. The United States today is a more complex society, facing a different kind of crisis than in 1933 – a crisis that might actually be intensified by following FDR's path. More fundamentally, the comparison to 1933 is misguided. Experience has revealed it to be an unhelpful template for newly-elected presidents. Soon after election day, Senator Chuck Schumer declared that the first three months of a Biden presidency should "look like FDR's," delivering on a "big, bold agenda." Success in the Georgia senatorial races – and recovery of Democratic control in the Senate – has produced even more calls for FDR-style boldness.īut the lure of the hundred-day benchmark should be resisted. Yet many Democrats are pushing Biden to follow FDR's example. In December, he seemed to play down the idea of a legislative onslaught, proposing a more limited set of hundred-day goals tied to handling the pandemic. AP Photo / Andrew Harnikīut Biden has also tried to limit expectations about his first hundred days. During the 2020 campaign, he leaned toward New Deal-style boldness, telling journalists that challenges facing the United States might even "eclipse what FDR faced" and that there was an opportunity for "really systemic change." President-elect Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, speaks at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware on November 19, 2020. Now President-elect Joe Biden is wrestling with the benchmark. German chancellors, British prime ministers and French presidents have all been held to a standard invented in the early days of the American New Deal. White House advisors have railed against the benchmark for decades. And, in April, they are judged on their success in signing major new laws. Before inauguration day, new presidents are pushed to set audacious legislative goals for their first hundred days. It also set a benchmark for every new president since. Roosevelt's initiative transformed American life. He moved boldly, persuading Congress to adopt a barrage of laws within his first hundred days in office. Roosevelt became president of a nation in crisis. ![]()
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