To Focus on the First 100 Days Is Absurd

The new president has been in office for a little longer than one week, and already the clock is ticking as to whether he can get a lot accomplished in the first 100 days of his presidency.

Did I miss the memo? I thought the presidency has a four-year term.

If you turn on television or radio, commentators, correspondents and talk show hosts are speaking in breathless tones about the need for President Barack Obama to get off to a fast start and show all kinds of accomplishments in his first 100 days in office.

And we are given the sense that if he doesn't sign a lot of major bills into law and issue a slew of important executive orders, then he will have failed.

Oh, stop it.

Lest you think this is about Obama, it isn't. I thought it was just as stupid to put Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush on some kind of silly shot clock.

This Washington parlor game happens every four or eight years. It has gotten so silly that some folks actually analyzed Obama's first 100 hours. It took that long to figure out the best path from the presidential sleeping quarters to the Oval Office!

The problem with so much emphasis being placed on the first 100 days is that a premium is placed on speed, as opposed to thoughtfulness.

Take the president's stimulus package. We are looking at spending $900 billion, and Congress is proceeding so fast that I doubt most of the members actually have read the entire bill. We know from history that moving with lightning speed leads to all kinds of problems later on.

The Patriot Act was rushed through, and we didn't find out about some of the weird provisions until after it already was signed into law. Oops! Sorry, too late.

The same happened with the bailout of the banking industry. We didn't discover until after it was too late that there weren't enough provisions focused on accountability of the funds or enough mandates to ensure banks used the funds to open up credit lines instead of to buy other banks.

These measures are too doggone important for us to act as if we're watching the movie "The Fast and the Furious."

The fundamental problem with this approach is that every president operates as if he were President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who set the initial standard for decisive action in the first 100 days of his presidency.

Ever since then, my media comrades have tried to hold each president to this same timetable, not realizing that times are different and the needs of the nation are different.

I believe in taking action when necessary. But I also realize that doing something for the sake of doing something is dangerous and sets a horrible precedent. And we are seeing this now with the stimulus package.

The House passed the measure with very little discussion about the nuances of the bill. Questions of oversight, how to manage the spending of billions of dollars, and whether the right programs would be funded initially all have gone by the wayside in order to, as some have suggested, give the president a quick victory out of the gate.

As a basketball player, President Obama knows that you can have a hot first quarter, hitting every shot and grabbing every rebound, and that could very well propel you to a decisive victory. But a basketball game has four quarters, and if you only play the first half well, you can blow the game in the second half.

We need thoughtful, measured political leaders who have studied all the angles and are making the right calls. Let's focus on our long-term future and not be bogged down in meeting a ridiculous report card for the satisfaction of the media.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN contributor and the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." Please visit his Web site at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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