![]() ![]() Some of his more ardent supporters had hoped Congress would make Inauguration Day into an official National Day of Prayer, but even without that formal label it had all the markings of one.Įisenhower turned spirituality into spectacle. ![]() Ike's inauguration set the tone for his new administration, with a proud, public display of faith. "I think one of the reasons I was elected was to help lead this country spiritually," he told Graham. When Ike won election by a wide margin, he interpreted the results as a mandate for a national religious revival. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he announced that the coming campaign would be nothing less than a "great crusade for freedom." Reverend Billy Graham, a close friend of Eisenhower's, met with him often to provide spiritual guidance and suggestions for specific passages of Scripture the candidate could sprinkle through his speeches. When he ran for the White House in 1952, Eisenhower sounded the call for America's religious reawakening. As a result, this can have a much longer and more important legacy.Įisenhower used his first months to revolutionize how Americans understood the role of religion, effectively making piety and patriotism one and the same. Such transformations can be revolutionary in their impact and, unlike mere laws, can't easily be repealed. Rather than look narrowly at specific political changes made in Congress, we should consider larger changes made in our political culture. Laws can be struck down by the courts or reversed by a later Congress, and indeed, that's exactly happened to much of FDR's vaunted First Hundred Days. Those seeking a smaller government don't measure their own success by the number of new laws passed and new programs created, and neither should we. Moreover, FDR's standard is essentially unfair to conservatives, as it stresses legislative victories above all else. For one thing, FDR came to power in a political climate crying out for action, with an unprecedented crisis crippling the country and a Congress ready and willing to follow his lead. "Congress doesn't pass legislation anymore," the humorist Will Rogers marveled "they just wave at the bills as they go by."īut the New Deal is an imperfect yardstick for gauging effectiveness. In the end, Roosevelt had sent fifteen major proposals to Capitol Hill and all fifteen sailed through. The rest of FDR's First Hundred Days didn't exactly maintain that pace but they came close. That day, the House approved the bill with a unanimous shout after just 38 minutes of debate the Senate passed it almost as quickly that night. On the first day of its legislative session, FDR sent Congress the Emergency Banking Act, which promised to fix the collapsed system that wiped out the life savings of nearly nine million people. With the nation demanding change, Washington raced to enact Roosevelt's New Deal at a breakneck pace. When FDR took office, the Great Depression was three years deep, and only getting worse. Indeed, when historians write about FDR's debut, we give it the capital letters it merits as a Major Event: "The First Hundred Days." Roosevelt, whose early months with Congress were so impressive they set a milestone (despite, as Trump very erroneously noted, only signing a measly nine executive orders). But the usual standard measures something quite specific: legislative accomplishments. To be sure, he's been unusually active in some ways, issuing 32 executive orders and holding Oval Office signing ceremonies to dramatize their importance. Indeed, the president has only made an effort on one of these ten promises-health care reform-and that fell apart spectacularly. It was, he announced dramatically, "my 100-day action plan to make America great again." Specifically, the Contract laid out an ambitious list of ten legislative proposals that would make major changes on an array of issues: tax cuts, infrastructure spending, school choice, health care, national security, immigration restriction and, ahem, "new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp." Trump literally signed his name to this contract, calling it "my pledge to you." But as his first hundred days comes to an end, that pledge has been unfulfilled. In late October, the Republican candidate traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to unveil an ambitious Contract with the American Voter. And last fall, he accepted the standard of the first hundred days and insisted he could meet it. But the president, as we know, isn't a historian. Historians generally shy away from the standard, knowing that the full measure of a presidency can't be taken in such short order. President Trump recently tweeted that judging a presidency by its first hundred days is a "ridiculous standard." This is, in one sense, true. ![]()
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