POTUS AND THE 100 DAYS – THE 4+2 YARDSTICK

Here’s my podcast: WATCH HERE

Below are my bulletized notes I used in the podcast. You’ll also find the five key questions at the bottom. Take a look.

(the 1789 Inaugural speech)

George Washington:

• everything is precedent

• letters he writes, people he meets or entertains, daily conduct

• tariff act signed on July 4

• declines to join a public book subscription list

• declines a nephew’s offer to seek a government position

• major surgery on a thigh tumor

(1861)

Abraham Lincoln:

• dominated by war and by patronage

• break-away decision to reject evac of Ft Sumter

• develop and oversee plans for Ft Sumter

• deep internal rivalries that point to him

• calls for 40,000 men and suspension of habeus corpus along a Baltimore/DC RR line

• calls for special session of Congress on July 4

• within sight of the Alexandria raid and death of family friend

(one of those seventy-seven actions)

Franklin D Roosevelt:

• tangible fear of existential danger

• 77 actions include 15 major laws

• radio speech uses the phrase 100 days

• attempted assassination in Miami pre-100

(on the phone about the DR)

Lyndon B Johnson:

• 2 sets of 100 days

• Driven by example of FDR

• 1^st set: does media interview and recounts the 100 days and his goals

• 2^nd set: uses Jan 6 SOTU speech to lay out the Great Society

• Tell his aide, Larry O’Brien to “jerk out every damn little bill you can and get them down here by the 12^th because on the 12^th you’ll have the last 100 days. Better than he [FDR] did”

• Runs alongside two massive civil rights events—the march across Edmund Pettis Bridge and the march from Selma-to-Montgomery—calls for voting rights law this year

• passage of elementary and secondary education act

• Sends US troops to Dominican Republic

(the first to do two non-consecutive terms)

Grover Cleveland 2^nd term

• pulls out of HI treaty

• 2-week period of stock market and interest rate volatility over gold (SecTreas made a negative statement and POTUS followed with a more positive statement)

• May 1, POTUS opens Columbian Exposition

• May 4, National Cordage and the Philadelphia/Reading RR go bankrupt and then a bank run starts because of gold fears (93 Panic)

• June, POTUS undergoes secret mouth surgery

(as depicted by his opponents)

Andrew Jackson 2^nd term

• Mar 1 signs Force Act into law

• Mar 20 appoints Edmund Roberts to be special trade agent in charge of negotiating overseas trade agreement, focus on vicinity of China

• May, POTUS states the nullification is dead, that nullification over tariff was a cover, that nullification will next be used over slavery

• May, POTUS tours New England, divides Harvard

Five Points on the Yardstick

#1 A big, vast, overarching thing exists (cloud, umbrella, theme and so on)

Is there such a thing now?

#2 There are multiple forms that POTUS’s action can take (bills made into laws, exec orders, exec decisions)

What is the dominant form now?

#3 Each action-frm has rams, imps, and cons (ramifications, implications, and consequences) that embed, settle in, and burrow under

What are the rams/imps/cons of the dominant form?

#4 All of this is table-setting for the big thing’s continuance, its continuity

Does POTUS continue with action, change action, or change to inaction?

#5 A strangely, personal and individual moment occurs

Does the moment connect to anything?

Take some time in working through your responses to the five questions. As a set, they will help you get a clearer sense of where we are and of the edge shared by the present and the future. That edge is always moving.

Contact me to discuss how these stories can enhance and enrich your leadership.

317-407-3687

email: dan@historicalsolutions.com