One Hundred Days of Trump

Professor Andrew Preston examines the origins of the first hundred days as a measure of presidential success in American politics. In American politics, the Hundred Days are meant to be a period of Rooseveltian success, not Napoleonic failure. Andrew Preston The concept of the Hundred Days was first used to describe the period between Napoleon's return from exile and his final defeat at Waterloo, in 1815. As a marker of the president's first months in office, a 'honeymoon' period when conditions for him to enact much of his agenda are supposed to be most advantageous, it has come to take on a rather different meaning in modern American politics. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in the Oval Office from 1933 to 1945, was the first president to have a period known as 'The Hundred Days.' He used it to usher in a series of legislative reforms that began the implementation of the New Deal, a domestic reform program which totally refashioned America in FDR's image and made his party, the Democrats, the dominant political force in the country for decades to follow. In American politics, the Hundred Days are meant to be a period of Rooseveltian success, not Napoleonic failure. It is supposed to mark a period of dramatic change so that America comes to reflect the values and goals of its new president.