Trump’s 100 Days
100 days.
It may seem like an arbitrary number, but it’s a meaningful one. Our presidents have announced their 100 day plan during the campaign trail ever since Frederick Roosevelt accomplished more during his 100 days than any president before or after. Now it’s been sensationalized by the media and wanna-be presidents follow suit by announcing their 100 day plan on the campaign trail. After the president has taken office, the media comes through around the 100 day mark, neatly compiling the president’s achievements and failures. What promises has he kept and what promises has he broken? The 100 days mark may be arbitrary, but it’s an important milestone because we’ve collectively decided it is one. It’s not a very long time, but it’s enough time to give us some critical information. Meaning, for the average president who is entering the White House under relatively normal circumstances (i.e. their predecessor didn’t die and make them president,) and there isn’t a national crisis to attend to immediately, the president likely won’t manage to make a lot of long-lasting policy changes in the first 100 days. After all, government crawls forward. To say politics moves slowly is a huge understatement. But the president should ideally make promises based on what they realistically believe they can accomplish. Of course, during the campaign trail, they are constantly torn between reality and needing to amp up their voters. Let’s set actual policy aside for a minute. The first 100 days is enough time for the dust to settle and for us to see what kind of a leader our president actually is. How does he handle failure? How does he handle success? Do his supporters still support him? How do his detractors feel about him now?
President Trump approached his 100th day this past Saturday. How does he feel about his achievements thus far? Let’s start there. The White House released a press release praising his “historic accomplishments.” The White House, and the president himself, have focused on the sheer number of bills he’s signed during this time. Trump has focused on executive orders, signing thirty executive orders in 100 days, despite the fact that he once, not too long ago, criticized Obama for relying on executive orders. This way of approaching early bills is not entirely unprecedented. Many other presidents have utilized executive orders during their administrations. That said, the bills Trump has signed haven’t been all that significant. His travel ban, which would have been a significant event for his 100 days history if it had been enacted into law, infamously has made its way through the courts. It’s been banned twice. So not all of the bills he’s signed have necessarily been made into law quite yet.
Trump has waged a war against the media. During his campaign trail, he constantly berated the mainstream media — especially the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC, for spreading fake news. In our increasingly segmented bubbles, it’s not exactly a surprise that different news outlets are approaching his 100 day anniversary differently. Right-leaning media, like Fox News, have loudly praised Trump’s first 100 days. By and large, these outlets have followed the White House’s lead in that they have focused on quantity, not quality, of what Trump has gotten done. On the other hand, mainstream and liberal-leaning media have been more harsh about the milestone — or at least more critical. CNN published a funny piece that reviewed the 100 days in GIFs on loop. CNN also published a more hard-hitting journalistic piece wherein they interviewed Trump supporters from around the country to see how they view the 100 days. They found that by and large, Trump’s loyal supporters are pleased with how things are going. New York Times fact checked Trump’s 100 days. Comparing New York Times’ article with the one Fox News released is fascinating, because the New York Times piece is so much more comprehensive. It’s not necessarily overly critical, and it does a good job of remaining unbiased, but it does seem critical when compared to Fox News. In Fox’s article, they had popup boxes to highlight “promises broken” and “promises kept.” However, because Fox only pointed out one promise broken and several promises kept, it felt like more of a rouse in order to appear unbiased, rather than a genuine attempt to hold Trump accountable.
What’s frustrating, although not particularly surprising, about the Fox News article, is that they are being overly kind to Trump. You don’t have to hate Trump in order to hold him accountable to his promises. You can even love him and still acknowledge when he hasn’t held up his end of the bargain. It’s called tough love. We all need it sometimes, even when you’re the president. Besides, it’s almost expected that the president is not going to get everything done that he said he would within the 100 days. Unforeseen challenges always arise and things almost never go according to plan. A good leader will take responsibility for this and at least show that he’s taking steps to achieve his plans.
Trump said he has made historic achievements, and that no other president has accomplished as much as he has in 90 days. This is objectively untrue, but you should also be wary of comparing him too much to other presidents. First of all, his predecessor, Barack Obama, entered office during a substantial financial crisis. When there is a national crisis of that magnitude, Congress is much more likely to act quickly, and the president will face fewer obstacles in getting things passed quickly. Trump entered the presidency when the country was relatively stable. It’s also important to point out that he has made good on one of his most important promises — he nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Though, that was more of a win for the Senate, who effectively blocked Obama’s choice for almost a year. Without that, Trump could not have so quickly or easily nominated Gorsuch.
There are a few things we can conclude from Trump’s 100 days, though. Accepting responsibility when things go wrong does not appear to be his strong suit. He has taken to blaming others more than once when plans have fallen through. Not only this, but he’s been incredibly reactionary. When something negative happens, he has taken to Twitter to tell the world exactly what he thinks without any filter. He tweeted 507 times in his 100 days. Twitter was often his main platform of engaging with supporters and detractors alike. He tweeted or said blasphemous things against the media, against particular individuals, blamed others for things that had gone wrong, and more. This is worrisome, because of course we want a level-headed leader. It’s possible that he is just overwhelmed and surprised by governmental responsibilities. But considering the fact that he’s been a leader in some capacity his entire life, it’s not exactly encouraging that he is reacting so vehemently to so many events. That indicates that it’s easy to get under his skin — which is not an attribute we necessarily want for our presidents.
Trump has broken many of his promises, but he has kept one major one: he’s shaken things up. We will have to watch to see if he keeps any others.
