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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Boglebaum here. The minute that Joe

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Speaker 1: Biden assumed presidency of the United States, the clock started

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Speaker 1: taking on his first hundred days in office. Well before

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Speaker 1: he was elected. Biden was promising decisive action in his

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Speaker 1: first hundred days to combat the COVID nineteen pandemic, rebuild

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Speaker 1: the economy, and address racial injustice and inequity. But why

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Speaker 1: the fascination with the president's first a hundred days? After all,

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Speaker 1: we've elect presidents for terms of one thousand, four hundred

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Speaker 1: and sixty days, So what's so important about these first

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Speaker 1: three months in change? Blame f DR for the article.

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Speaker 1: This episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Ladd, Associate professor of Public policy and Government at

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Speaker 1: Georgetown University. He said, we started using the term first

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Speaker 1: a hundred days after Franklin D. Roosevelt first a hundred days.

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Speaker 1: FDR's first a hundred days were so productive that we've

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Speaker 1: talked about it ever since. FDR came to office in

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Speaker 1: ninety three. In the depths of the Great Depression, he

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Speaker 1: signed seventy six pieces of legislation in his first hundred days,

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Speaker 1: including fifteen major overhauls and new programs. He took the

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Speaker 1: US off the gold standard, revamped the banking system, and

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Speaker 1: created jobs through the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee

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Speaker 1: Valley Authority. No president since has even come close to

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Speaker 1: FDR's productivity. Kennedy passed twenty six bills, Reagan just nine,

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Speaker 1: Obama only eleven, but that hasn't shaken the fixation on

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Speaker 1: the first hundred days. It remains a benchmark of political

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Speaker 1: efficiency and a convenient measure of a new president's power.

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Speaker 1: A study showed that before the nineteen fifties, the average

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Speaker 1: number of laws passed during a president's first hundred days

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Speaker 1: was forty six, compared with sixteen for later time periods.

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Speaker 1: In his first undred days, Biden has spearheaded some bold initiatives,

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Speaker 1: including signing a one point nine trillion dollar pandemic recovery package.

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Speaker 1: He's also doubled the goal his administrations set for COVID vaccinations,

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Speaker 1: surpassing two hundred million vaccinations by his first hundred days

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Speaker 1: instead of the original goal of a hundred million. He's

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Speaker 1: also called for all US troops to be pulled from

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Speaker 1: Afghanistan by September eleventh of this year. Biden has also

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Speaker 1: signed a historic sixty executive orders, memos, and proclamations, the

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Speaker 1: most by any president at his first hundred days, a

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Speaker 1: third of which were direct reversals of executive orders signed

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Speaker 1: by his predecessor, Donald Trump. Most of those reversals undid

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Speaker 1: Trump era policies on immigration, the environment, and equity. For instance,

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Speaker 1: Biden revoked Trump's executive order that separated migrant families at

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Speaker 1: the US Mexico border. In an article for five thirty

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Speaker 1: eight dot com, political scientist Julia Azari noted that presidents

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Speaker 1: often enjoy a honeymoon with Congress during their first hundred days,

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Speaker 1: making it easier to push the new White Houses legislative agenda,

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Speaker 1: and the effect is strongest for presidents who confront divided government.

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Speaker 1: One possible explanation for the hundred day honeymoon is that historically,

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Speaker 1: most incoming presidents enjoyed high approval ratings with voters. In

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Speaker 1: those less divisive times, Senators and representatives from the opposing

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Speaker 1: party would cross the aisle, is a nod to presidential

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Speaker 1: popularity and more importantly, to assuage voters back home. For example,

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Speaker 1: even though President George W. Bush won the two thousand

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Speaker 1: election by the slimmest of margins. He was popular enough

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Speaker 1: that conservative leaning Democrats helped pass his tax cut package

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Speaker 1: early in his tenure. Trump had no such luck, and

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Speaker 1: Biden hasn't either. The lad said popularity matters less now

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Speaker 1: because there are a lot fewer conservative Democrats and liberal

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Speaker 1: Republicans than they're used to be. Plus, Trump and Biden

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Speaker 1: were significantly less popular than previous incoming presidents. Trump's approval

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Speaker 1: ratings at his inauguration were in the high thirties at

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Speaker 1: the hundred day mark it stood at. Biden's approval rating

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Speaker 1: was on his hundred day mark significantly lower than Barack

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Speaker 1: Obama or Ronald Reagan sixty eight percent at the same

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Speaker 1: point in their first terms in office, and beside Trump,

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Speaker 1: the only other president with a lower approval rating at

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Speaker 1: a hundred days than Biden was Gerald Ford at forty

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Speaker 1: eight percent. The bipartisan honeymoon of the past appears to

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Speaker 1: be over. Not one Republican member of Congress voted for

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Speaker 1: Biden's pandemic relief bill, for example, and as of this writing,

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Speaker 1: it's unclear whether Biden has the votes to pass its

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Speaker 1: ambitious two trillion dollar Infrastructure Plan. Another reason why moral

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Speaker 1: legislation often gets passed by in the first a hundred

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Speaker 1: days often has to do with the political changing of

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Speaker 1: the guard. When the White House in Congress are finally

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Speaker 1: controlled by the same party, previously defeated bills get a

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Speaker 1: second chance at life. President Bill Clinton signed the Family

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Speaker 1: and Medical Leave Act within days of taking office. He

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Speaker 1: could act so swiftly because the same bill had previously

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Speaker 1: been passed by Congress and vetoed by President George H. W. Bush.

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Speaker 1: The same thing happened with the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,

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Speaker 1: which President Barack Obama signed into law nine days after

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Speaker 1: his inauguration. If President stands, then Biden's most substantial legislative

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Speaker 1: moves will come well beyond the somewhat arbitrary hundred day mark.

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Speaker 1: President Lyndon B. Johnson didn't sign the Voting Rights Act

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Speaker 1: until seven months into his term, and Obama didn't enact

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Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act until more than a year into

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Speaker 1: his first term. Today's episode is based on the article

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Speaker 1: why do we care about the first hundred Days? On

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Speaker 1: how Stuff works dot com, written by Dave Rooms. Brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with

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Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

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Speaker 1: Four more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,

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