First Act in a Long Drama

By Hugh Sidey

Assessing a new President after 100 days on the job is a journalistic celebration born out of respect for Franklin Roosevelt and nurtured by nostalgia for the old-fashioned kind of crisis that produced an unusual sense of national unity. The by now traditional assessment is also a tribute to Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who helped raise the 100 days to legend.

"In this period," wrote Schlesinger in The Coming of the New Deal, "Franklin Roosevelt sent 15 messages to Congress, guided 15 major laws to enactment, delivered ten speeches, held press conferences and Cabinet meetings twice a week, conducted talks with foreign heads of state, sponsored an international conference, made all the major decisions in domestic and foreign policy, and never displayed fright or panic and rarely even bad temper."

No President since has been up to that measure. But no President has ever had such a crisis, one that would so surely get people's attention and inspire cooperation. The 100th-day ritual is not without some logic. It is a reasonable time to take stock of the start, but it is an uncertain guide to a President's success. John Kennedy's 100 days were unrelieved disaster and hesitation, and his temper suffered accordingly: "I'm going to give this damned job to Nixon," he once said. It took Lyndon Johnson a year to spawn the Great Society, Richard Nixon three years to engineer the opening to China.

In his 100 days, Ronald Reagan got no major legislation passed; not a single program became operative, and he held only two press conferences in two months. He is, however, the only President in the past ten years to have worn white tie and tails three times, chopped half a cord of wood, ridden a horse, shortened the Inaugural parade, received a ton of jelly beans, got eight pints of new blood and floated enough good humor to buoy, after a 17-year drought, the hopes of those people who compile books on presidential wit. But these things are not the stuff of Schlesingerian legend.

In truth, there is more. Even though his momentum was all but halted by the assassination attempt, Reagan made leadership the issue and established a clear purpose and direction. He set two priorities: the first on economic renewal and the second on revitalizing American military strength. Reagan assembled a package of proposed budget and tax cuts and insisted that they be presented as a whole and not fed piecemeal into the congressional grinder. He established a matrix for decision making and, even as F.D.R. did, he maintained a confident and sunny disposition through all the tribulations of starting up a concern ten tunes larger than General Motors and infinitely more complex.

The problem with these things is that they do not fit neatly in box scores, nor can they be delineated on graphs that show ups and downs. In a city that nourishes itself on statistics, there is great difficulty in grappling with misty judgments. Reagan remains more of a promise than a fulfillment. The hope that has been sustained and the excitement and upbeat mood of the Reagan forces have not reduced inflation by much, nor have they significantly cut interest rates. The tests lie in the next 100 days, and maybe even the next 1,000 days.

When Roosevelt took office, the economic system had collapsed, the people had lost hope, and the national income was less than half what it had been four short years before. But the presidency and the rest of the Government proved to be remarkably powerful and responsive. The federal apparatus then was lean and flexible, mobilized by the social upheaval it faced and willing to take big risks to prevent chaos. Quite the opposite is true today. The country remains immensely strong and prosperous. But the nation is not certain where it wants to go, and there are grave doubts about both the skill and power of the presidency and the ability of the Government to devise an effective agenda for the perilous years that are ahead. In his 100 days Reagan has merely set the stage. This drama is going to be far more than a one-act play.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.