Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first hundred days, “the first hundred days” of a presidency has become the first test of presidencies.
It’s been assumed that, like FDR, a successful president in the first hundred days gets a lot done and aggregates lots of power to do it.
Trump has now revealed the fatuousness of that view.
No modern president has done as much as Trump has done in his first hundred days — to trash human rights, undermine our alliances, threaten the independence of our universities and the press, stymie progress on climate change, decimate our civil service, shaft the poor, harm the working class, worsen the economy, and leave much of our government in tatters.
And his efforts to amass power have ridden roughshod over the Constitution, ignored the federal courts, usurped the authority of Congress, and turned the Justice Department into a sewer for personal vengeance.
The most important lesson of Trump’s first hundred days is that the test of a successful president after 100 days has nothing to do with how much he gets done or how much power he accumulates.
The real test is how much better off are the people, and how much stronger is our democracy.
By these measures, the second term of Trump is beyond a doubt the worst travesty in American history.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.