From Rick Brookhiser’s essay in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend:
What will Donald Trump’s first hundred days bring: surprises, achievements, catastrophes? A slow, steady warm-up?
History can’t predict the mix, only offer a range of possibilities for the 45th president. For Mr. Trump, the range is wider than usual because he comes into office untethered by a record and uninformed by experience.
The initial “hundred days” as a distinct period in a presidency was first used to describe the special session of Congress called by Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1933. It set the template for the opening act of an activist administration: a president and his allies (really subordinates) in Congress passing a bold program to address a crisis. The president, if not the program, is then enshrined in myth.