Since the election of President Barack Obama, every cable news network has featured a “First 100 Days” countdown in the bottom corner of the screen.
The countdown provides the viewer with an accurate number of days that we can begin measuring the success or failure of President Obama, or so seems to be the media’s goal.
The 100-day benchmark stems from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the success he had pushing policy through that would eventually pull America out of the Great Depression.
The success of Roosevelt is something that should be admired and strived for by all presidents. Many historians have viewed him as one of the greatest presidents that this country has ever had.
This raises the question: Is the first one hundred day assessment an unfair benchmark for President Obama or any other president to live up to?
Neither the question raised, nor the purpose of this column is to discourage people from expressing their opinion about President Obama or the policies he supports. The goal is to try and keep a realistic perspective of what will be possible from a president who has inherited an extremely complicated world.
President Obama’s campaign message emphasized hope and change that inspired millions of people, especially a record number of young voters to participate in the political process.
However, people who voted for him and those who did not, need to keep in mind the amount of work that needs to be done within our borders and those that stretch overseas.
What is not listed above the flashy graphic of the “First 100 Days,” is a laundry list of problems that were left behind by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
So before we move forward to deal with our challenges we must look to the past to truly understand.
The outgoing president left American soldiers fighting on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan, stretching our military so thin that soldiers are being asked to fight in multiple tours of duty.
He and his party left the economy in shambles. The recession we are currently going through has cost people millions of jobs and nobody knows for sure if we have seen the bottom yet.
Finally, although the list could go on, the climate crisis was not addressed in any serious manner by the outgoing administration, ignoring all signs that drastic steps need to be taken to slow the rate in which the planet is warming.
The public needs to understand that the problems we face most certainly will not go away within one hundred days.
In fact, it might take one hundred days just to undo what President Bush did in his eight years in office.
The president is elected to a four-year term and that should be our measurement of whether or not he has been a successful president.
After this period we can then exercise our greatest democratic tool, re-elect or replace.
In the meantime, give this man and his administration sufficient time to address all the problems that face our country both in the future and those that were waiting for him on day one.
Remember that the election of Barack Obama was not the climax of things to come, he is the beginning.
Kevin Garrity, a junior journalism major, is sports editor of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at kevin.garrity@laverne.edu.
