Many political experts claim that Barack Obama’s “Honeymoon Period” will last as long as his first 100 days as President. What achievements will he make in this time?
PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- When presidents enter the White House, they have approximately 100 days to show what they are made of. The notion of a "hundred days" is an artificial creation of Franklin Roosevelt after he became president in 1932 in the Great Depression. But it has become a benchmark for evaluating the early success of a president. The term is more than symbolic. Some presidents have been able to do a lot with those hundred days. Not surprisingly, Roosevelt was the most successful we have seen. His hundred days lasted from March 9 to June 16, 1933, and Congress passed 15 major bills. Roosevelt, in a period of experimental genius, found support from Congress for a series of programs to help stabilize an economy where 25% of the work force was unemployed and banks were falling apart as panicked citizens pulled out their money. Roosevelt understood that he had a limited window of opportunity after his election, and he moved fast. Over the hundred days, Democrats remade the face of the federal government. Programs were created to regulate Wall Street and banking, support agriculture and labor, provide public works employment, regulate production and more. Through the legislation, as well as his historic fireside chats, Roosevelt restored confidence in the government itself, as Americans sensed that Washington could save American capitalism. He also used the first months to overcome divisions that existed within the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson ad a very different kind of hundred days when he took over after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Johnson used his hundred days to define his presidency in relation to his predecessor. Kennedy had encountered considerable trouble passing most of his legislative agenda, including civil rights and tax cuts. Johnson believed that in the months after the assassination, he needed to link himself to the deceased president, who seemed to become more popular after his death, and he used that connection to build political support for his bills. This is why Johnson retained the services of many Cabinet officials from the Kennedy administration. "I needed that White House staff," Johnson recalled, "Without them I would have lost my link to John Kennedy, and without that I would have had absolutely no chance of gaining the support of the media or the intellectuals." During his first speech to Congress after the assassination, Johnson invoked the memory of the slain president by asking legislators to help him fulfill the unfinished agenda. Calling Kennedy "the greatest leader of our time," Johnson said to Congress, "Let us continue." The memory of Kennedy helped him succeed in passing legislation on civil rights, tax cuts and the War on Poverty. Ronald Reagan spent his hundred days pushing for his across-the-board tax cut in 1981, a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. Reagan argued that tax cuts would stimulate economic growth. He gave a speech on television, urging citizens to write their legislators and tell them to support the cuts. By the end of the bidding process, Reagan could claim victory on Capitol Hill and his key legislation had drawn the support of his opposition. Sometimes presidents have stumbled in the hundred days, and the results are disastrous. Jimmy Carter is one of the most striking examples. In his hundred days, Carter did almost everything wrong in 1977. One of his biggest failures was how he handled relations with Congress. He sent a letter to Congress stating that 19 projects would be cut. Congress was furious. They believed these funds were essential to their constituents. Bitter feelings remained and the rocky relations continued to be a major problem for Carter. Barack Obama can learn a lesson from all of these presidents about how to break out of the gridlock that has bogged down Washington. He will have to use his hundred days to build confidence in the government and its ability to stabilize the economic system, taking advantage of the narrow window they will have to get legislation through. Obama will have to define himself in relation to his predecessor, but in this case by demonstrating clearly to the public what he will do differently, rather than the same, as President Bush. And, finally, the new president will need to find legislation that attracts some support from the opposition to diminish the power of polarization on Capitol Hill and establish the groundwork for future compromise. The one thing that Obama must realize is that those hundred days will disappear quickly. Once they are gone, as Bill Clinton learned after delaying his push for health care reform, the political capital is hard to get back.
Obama's victory caps struggles of previous generations
(CNN) -- At a modest stucco home in Montgomery, Alabama, an unlikely presidential victory celebration is taking place this morning. Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of the late George Wallace, the Alabama governor who once vowed to maintain segregation forever, is rejoicing. Kennedy, 58, voted for Sen. Barack Obama. She says she was "mesmerized" when she first heard him speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Her admiration for Obama deepened when she learned he opposed the Iraq war. She even slapped an Obama bumper sticker on her car, even though someone told her that the prospect of an African-American president would have her father "rolling over in his grave." "I think Obama is going to be one of the best presidents we'll have," she says. "He's going to bring the freshness we need. We've just been bogged down so long. We need this shot in the arm." President-elect Obama's victory Tuesday may be a racially transformative event. But for people like Kennedy, who came through the fires of the civil rights movement, it also represents something else -- personal triumph. Obama's win validates the risks they took years ago. Some, like Kennedy and an entire generation of white Southerners, risked social rejection for renouncing the bigotry of their parents. Others risked their lives while leading civil rights campaigns in the Deep South. Some almost lost their belief in the inherent goodness of America because they saw so many innocent people die. They are people like Bob Moses, who led African-American voter registration drives in Mississippi during the early 1960s. He was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi when three civil rights workers were murdered by a group of men that included a Mississippi deputy sheriff. He also helped lead an ill-fated attempt to sit African-American delegates from Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, which was segregated. Moses grew so disenchanted by his experiences that he moved to Tanzania. He returned to the United States in 1976 and founded the Algebra Project, a national program that encourages African-American students to attend college by first teaching them mathematical literacy. "We seem to be evolving," Moses says. "The country is trying to reach for the best part of itself." Moses is evolving as well. Obama is the first president he's voted for in three decades, he says. "I don't do politics, but I made sure to vote this time," says Moses, now 73 years old. "Obama is the first person I really felt moved to vote for." Moses says he is amazed that Obama has helped lead the country through a racially transformative moment without anyone getting killed. Pivotal events in America's racial history -- the debate over slavery, the assault on segregation -sparked widespread violence, Moses says. "I don't think people appreciate how delicate it is to move the society around these questions without descent into chaos or into pockets of chaos," he says. Moses recently attended an Obama rally when Obama -- a keen student of the civil rights movement -- discovered he was in the audience. "When he got on the platform, he gave me a shout out," says Moses, whose reluctance to be in the spotlight was notorious among his civil rights colleagues. "He said, 'there's someone in the audience, and he's a hero of mine.' " Obama's victory, though, wasn't just made possible by civil rights activists, some say. It was also made possible by a generation of African-American leaders who excelled in the political, sports and entertainment arenas: former Secretary of State Colin Powell, golfer Tiger Woods and pop culture figures like actor Bill Cosby and Dennis Haysbert, who portrays a black president in the television series "24." They didn't change laws, but they did shift perceptions, some say. "We live in a society where white voters are prepared and accustomed to seeing African-Americans in prominent positions and leadership," says Brett Gadsden, an assistant professor of African-American studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The Rev. James Zwerg almost lost his life trying to usher in this new society. Zwerg, who is white, participated in the Freedom Rides in the early 1960s, and he says Obama's victory means the country has gone "full-circle." Zwerg was almost beaten to death by a white mob in 1961 when he dared to sit next to African-Americans on a Greyhound bus. He was part of a group of white and black college students, dubbed "Freedom Riders," who tried to desegregate interstate travel. The photos of a bloodied Zwerg rallied activists across the nation. Zwerg became a civil rights hero, but his father disowned him for protesting alongside African-Americans. Yet Zwerg became so tormented by the attention he received - he thought he got too much credit because he was white -- that he once contemplated suicide. Zwerg, 68, says the bond he experienced with other Freedom Riders caused the most inspiring moments of his life. Obama's campaign reminded him of that era. "Obama's message reflects much of the same idealism that [the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.] spoke of when he talked about coming together to improve our country," Zwerg says. "He's really rekindled the same enthusiasm for change among young people, which is terrific." Zwerg says he never thought back then that an African-American would integrate the Oval Office -- nor did any Freedom Rider. "I don't think it really crossed our mind."