Word: roosevelt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wage war against the English and Prussian armies before his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. (It actually took 111 days, but we'll give him a mulligan.) Napoleon reclaimed power in 1815, however; Americans didn't start assessing their Presidents in 100-day increments until Franklin Delano Roosevelt came along more than a century later...
...Roosevelt was a presidential overachiever - and his swift, take-charge method of governing was exactly what an ailing, Depression-weary nation needed in 1933. After delivering one of the most famous Inaugural speeches in presidential history - does the phrase "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" sound familiar? - Roosevelt had been in office barely 24 hours when he declared a four-day bank holiday and drafted the Emergency Banking Act, which helped calm a financial panic that was quickly spiraling out of control. By the time he hit the 100-day mark, Roosevelt had instituted the "fireside...
Franklin D. Roosevelt's critics once tried to get at him through his dog, Fala, claiming the Navy had been dispatched, at great public expense, after Fala was supposedly left behind on a remote island. The attack backfired--the GOP hadn't factored in the popularity of a pooch with his own secretary to answer fan mail. America is canine-crazy, which is why a President's best friend can sometimes be the only one he needs...
...assets that many banks have on their books, a plan to bail out the auto industry and a strict new regulatory regime proposed for Wall Street. Obama has also completely overhauled foreign policy, from Cuba to Afghanistan. "In a way, Obama's 100 days is even more dramatic than Roosevelt's," says Elaine Kamarck of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Roosevelt only had to deal with a domestic crisis. Obama has had to overhaul foreign policy as well, including two wars. And that's really the secret of why this has seemed so spectacular...
With the exception of Johnson's remarkable run, the few successful 100-day sprints have been a triumph of vision over substance. Roosevelt, Reagan and Obama changed the national mood more than anything else - and moods can change back quickly, especially in our overripe, overwired cable-news dystopia. As impressive a start as Obama has had, these 100 days could come to seem an overambitious and naive presage of disaster if the President's financial policies are inadequate to meet the crisis; his budget proposals are gutted by Congress; and his attempts to leave Iraq, fight in Afghanistan and negotiate...