THE concept of evaluating a new American administration on the basis of what it achieves in its first 100 days was introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, although it’s unlikely he got the idea from French history, where “les cent jours” had long served as a description of the period between Napoleon Bonaparte’s return to power in March 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo.

 

Nor did FDR pluck the figure out of thin air: shortly after his inauguration he summoned a special session of Congress, which continued for 100 days. By the time it ended, the legislative basis for the New Deal had been established. In the case of all subsequent presidencies, 100 days was an arbitrary figure. That remains the case in 2009, notwithstanding purported parallels with the economic challenge Roosevelt faced.

 

Predictably, in the run-up to Wednesday, the Obama administration’s 100th day in office, there has been a plethora of commentary on its achievements and shortcomings. And one thing on which almost everyone would agree is that there has been plenty to talk about.

 

Barack Obama’s more outlandish detractors on the far right have accused him, sometimes in more or less the same breath, of being a socialist and a fascist, and of planning to send large numbers of Americans to re-education camps (which, come to think of it, may not be such a bad idea in some cases). On the left, the most common charge is that of half-measures and inadequate departures from the policies of the Bush administration.

 

On the domestic front, the fortunes of the Obama presidency are directly linked to the state of the economy. For the time being, the perception of making an effort to steer the ship out of the doldrums is sufficient to maintain reasonably high approval ratings, but before very long visible returns will be required from the hundreds of billions being poured into rescue and stimulation packages.  If all the public money that has gone into providing a crutch for capitalism fails to stave off mass unemployment, popular patience will obviously begin to run out. 

 

Unfortunate as it may be, however, there was never any good reason to suspect that Obama would seek to veer away, in any meaningful sense, from the market economy model. The progressive redistribution of wealth he occasionally mentioned in his campaign speeches hinted at a healthy change from the Bush regime’s tendency towards the retrogressive variety, but there were no grounds for expecting it to go beyond a bit of tinkering at the margins. Reforming America’s inadequate system of medical care is a monumental task, and it remains to be seen how it will be tackled.

 

Arguably the biggest change Obama was expected to usher in related to his nation’s battered image, and on that front not being George W. Bush has obviously been an enormous advantage – not least in the sense that the cool-as-a-cucumber incumbent invariably conveys the impression of being completely in charge, whereas his frequently flustered predecessor was considerably under the influence of the coterie that surrounded him.

 

The differences go well beyond personality traits, however. Obama lost little time in announcing the closure of CIA secret prisons and plans to shut down the infamous facility at Guantanamo Bay; he was also quick to ban particularly outrageous interrogation techniques and followed it up this month by releasing the memos through which Bush administration lawyers authorized the torture of prisoners. At the same time, he announced that no action would be taken against those who had used these methods, and that “reflection, not retribution” was the need of the hour.

 

This clearly is an instance of the manipulative use of language. It’s unlikely that the thought of retribution has crossed many minds. Accountability is a different matter. But one can’t imagine the president calling for “reflection, not accountability”. It has been suggested that the US will be in breach of its obligations under international law unless it prosecutes the perpetrators of torture. Some people, meanwhile, find it significant that Obama has not ruled out proceeding against those who gave the orders. However, unfortunately but not surprisingly, the likelihood of anyone being taken to task is minuscule.

 

This is broadly in conformity with a wider trend, in the first 100 days, towards welcome moves that do not go far enough. Obama has honored many of his campaign promises and even raised expectations in spheres that did not figure prominently in the run-up to last November’s election, but he is at the same time keen not to jeopardize the ideologically divergent coalition in Washington.

 

For instance, he has eased credit controls and travel restrictions vis-à-vis Cuba – and at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad recently, he even acknowledged the US had something to learn from Cuba’s international medical philanthropism – but without lifting the embargo that has economically constricted the socialist island for 47 years. At the same time, the congenial interaction between Obama and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez illustrated a crucial aspect of what has changed since January 20.

 

I was speaking last week with one of America’s foremost cultural figures on the left, Pete Seeger, in connection with an article I am working on, and he told me he’d lately been reading Team of Rivals, a detailed account of the Lincoln presidency. He found a resonance in a reference therein to someone who asked Abraham Lincoln why he was hesitating with the emancipation proclamation, decreeing the end of slavery. I can’t do it right now, Abe responded, but you must keep pushing: I can’t do this job unless you keep pushing. Seeger suspects that Obama feels the same way. And in practical terms that view is not all that far removed from Naomi Klein’s recent insistence that the millions whose efforts and activism propelled Obama to the White House cannot at this stage afford to be passive. 

 

Obama has a great deal more on his plate than the issues touched on herein – there’s Iraq, still a bloody mess on some days; there’s the growing Afpak headache; there’s the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. There is much – perhaps too much – to be done. As a prelude to the hundreds of days that lie ahead, the first 100  have offered  evidence of broadly commendable instincts and intentions, notwithstanding the various errors. The lesson herein is that popular pressure for progressive change must be redoubled. As the nearly 90-year-old Seeger, who came of age in the Roosevelt era, says in one of his more recent songs, “Don’t say it can’t be done, the battle’s just begun…”

 

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