The first 100 days of a new presidency are supposedly a telling period, a unique window of time in which a president can enact big change. It's a completely arbitrary deadline, devoid of any real significance, but it has become conventional wisdom nonetheless. Why do we accept this absurd notion that only in the shell-shocked aftermath of an election can meaningful policy be shoved through our cantankerous political system?
Presidential terms are four years long. That's 1,461 days. What do we expect President Barack Obama to do for the final 1,361, learn to fiddle? I suppose he could follow former President George W. Bush's lead and start a war or two to maintain relevance.
This obsession with the first 100 days is closely linked to another stale bit of Washington lingo, the concept of political capital.
"Obama looks to cash in political capital," blared the headline on CNN's Political Ticker. The author's shrewd analysis followed: "President Barack Obama, who arguably won a large chunk of political capital in the 2008 election, is now looking to cash in as he urges Congress to pass a massive economic stimulus package."
Such descriptions treat political capital like a pile of poker chips. It's a finite stash - spend it wisely because when it's depleted, the game becomes pretty difficult to win.
This oversimplification ignores those presidents who have enacted serious, substantive policy well into their tenures, after the evaporation of their supposed political capital. We should view political capital as something more elusive and less ephemeral than the spoils of victory. Perhaps political capital is simply a president's ability to mobilize the country behind an agenda. In this sense, it's not necessarily how many legislators want to work with you, but rather how many people want legislators to work with you. The most effective presidents, executives like Reagan and FDR, sustained their political capital by bringing the people with them to Congress, not vice versa.
If this is the template of an effective presidency, one that successfully converts platform into policy, then we may be witnessing the beginning of a hugely effective presidency, and the dawn of some truly monumental shifts in our political landscape.
The last two weeks have offered two main lessons: Americans largely trust Obama to do the right thing, and Republicans will be hard pressed to stop him.
When the stimulus package was originally introduced, the Republican talking-point-machine exploded. Congressional Republicans, fueled by Rush Limbaugh and his ditto-heads, pulled their criticisms straight out of 1980, deriding the stimulus bill as a "liberal wish-list" filled with "wasteful Washington spending." Never mind that stimulus without spending is technically impossible - they had their sound byte, and they were running with it.
Analysts and jittery Democrats fretted that Obama was "losing control of the message," and many wondered if our new president knew how to play hardball. Obama, serene as usual, bypassed the Washington echo chamber and took his case directly to the people. He explained his recovery package at a prime-time press conference and several town hall meetings thereafter, calmly brushing aside any criticism of the plan and reminding Americans that this recession is real and growing but solvable.
In the end, only three Republican senators supported the president's recovery package. Yet as it turned out, that was all he needed. The bill will be signed into law today. For Republicans, this must have been a startling realization - that Obama can do so much with the consent of so few.
Through it all, the president's approval ratings have remained unchanged, hovering in the 60s and 70s and providing him with ample clout for the months to come. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are mired in the 30s where they started. In other words, "Just say no" may not be the right answer. I'm sure they'll keep looking.
In the meantime, they may find themselves hoping that Obama's political capital is an expendable sum and not a sustainable quality. Because if he can sustain it, they're screwed.
Jake Miller is a political science and anthropology senior. His column appears weekly.
