I don’t think we’re disagreeing about the artificiality of the 100 Days conceit. And presidents refuse to play along at their peril — President Bush’s Administration spent weeks in their unsuccessful effort to kill off the concept, and finally relented. They even went so far as to give him a “report card.”

You’re completely right that presidents face media constraints, not all of which are particularly logical, or helpful. And the 100 Days certainly is one.

But as I wrote at the outset, the 100 Days doesn’t seem to me to be that horrible. I’m sure you address the importance in politics of setting and meeting (or beating) expectations, and I think that the most important way in which presidents respond to the 100 Days is by setting their own expectations.

Mind you, the heart of a presidential campaign is a bad place to discuss 100 Days expectations in anything like a realistic setting.

As for the reprise, it’s sort of an evergreen piece for us. We write it every time.

Good comments. You are right to take me to task for conflating the “punditocracy” with the media, and I stand corrected. Unfortunately, it won’t be the last time I lump them together (it’s so convenient!), so let this serve as a preemptive blanket apology. Nor do I take issue with your claim that few if any journalists will blame Obama for failing to persuade Congress to produce the legislative equivalent of FDR’s First New Deal.

But methinks you are being far too modest about media influence and what’s going on here: the fact that Clinton promised to present a health care reform bill in 100 days, or that Obama “laid out, in detail, what he hoped to do in his first 100 days” at a campaign fundraiser, is because the media persists in using 100 days as some sort of measuring rod for legislative accomplishments. If this was all a parlor game, I wouldn’t care. But it’s not. And, wisely or not (and you know where I stand), presidents – while often publicly poo-pooing the 100 day deadline – nonetheless take the public relations aspect of it very seriously in ways that distort the policy making process, and not for the better. Why else do they persist in using the 100 day yardstick? If Clinton had claimed, I promise to produce health care legislation within a year, he would have met his deadline. And now we are bracing for the onslaught of “Obama promised such and such by 100 days but only achieved this much” stories. My point is that presidents feel constrained to acknowledge, and even fulfill, these 100-day deadlines, and against their better judgment, because the media persists in writing about it.

Eight years is a lifetime in terms of the public consciousness – here’s your chance to reprise that article, and perform a useful public service to boot!

(Speaking of public services, as you aren’t shy about pointing out, I don’t have the luxury of a copy editor. If you are willing to take up the task on the side, I can give you a free t-shirt!)

Who’s “pretending” that the 100 Days yardstick didn’t originate with the FDR presidency? I mean, I guess I might be, in a way, since I brought up the fact that the 100 days coinage appears to have been a conscious look back at Napoleon’s (ill-fated) 100 Days, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.

Will there be a lot of FDR/Obama comparisons in the media? I’d bet on it. How did they respond to the economic crisis of their time, etc. Will the media take Obama to task, as you claim above, if it decides Obama has not accomplished as much as FDR did? That’s hard to measure: You conflate “the punditocracy” with news reporters, which is useful for sweeping denunciations but not so useful for actual media analysis. I don’t think that straight news reporters will declare that Obama is a failure for not getting as much through Congress as FDR did. I really don’t. Will they note that he didn’t get as much through Congress? Probably.

In general, though, I don’t think that 100 days coverage historically has been about measuring against the FDR yardstick in the sense of “well, FDR managed to get 16 major pieces of legislation through, so Clinton/Bush/Obama is terrible.” I do recall a lot of “what’s happened in the last 100 days?”

But even where there are comparisons, I also don’t think there’s anything particularly dishonest or historically illiterate about the 100 days standard. It’s not like reporters pretend that there aren’t differences in historical circumstances. You’re not going to see a lot of “Well, Bob, Obama really has just failed to use the radio as well as FDR did.” If you’re saying that FDR faced unique circumstances, well, geez, sure. So did each one of his successors.

Let me restate: The 100 Days is a media conceit — a smart observer might view it was essentially a marketing gimmick, like the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau. As I called it in 2001, it’s “an artificial but traditional milestone for nascent administrations.”

“You don’t think Clinton’s decision to promise a health care bill in 100 days wasn’t a conscious (and misguided) effort to capitalize on the media’s fascination with the FDR precedent?”

Sure. But we’re not arguing about whether the 100 days came from the FDR administration.

And in that particular instance, what was misguided wasn’t the FDR reference, it was promising a particular achievement by a particular date and failing to deliver. The coverage wasn’t “Clinton sure didn’t measure up to FDR” it was “Clinton failed to achieve what he said he would achieve,” a distinction that lies at the core of my argument about the 100 days. (You know, Obama laid out, in detail, what he hoped to do in his first 100 days. He did it at a fundraiser in May 2008. I think that will weigh on the scales.)

Your challenge is eight years too late. On April 27, 2001, we ran this:

Headline: “100 days historically significant to media, not presidency.” Nearly 500 words (about average for a bylined story on our wire). Some sample points: “fairly meaningless” yardstick. “no real significance” to using the number. “Arbitrarily” using standard set by media under FDR.

Olivier – I challenge you to be the first journalist to write an article titled: “Why 100 days is a ridiculous time to evaluate the Obama presidency.” If you do so, I’ll substitute your story for my planned coverage of my boyhood hero, baseball player Mark Fidrych. Dare to be different!