First 100 Days As Crucial As New Deal, Says Fdr Author

Barack Obama's looming presidency has already attracted comparisons with Kennedy's Camelot and Lincoln on the eve of civil war, but the increasing parallel is with Franklin D Roosevelt's first 100 days in the midst of the worst economic crisis of the last century.

Roosevelt is the standard against which other Democratic presidents are measured. His New Deal was the antidote to the Great Depression. In those first 100 days, he signed 15 major pieces of legislation to help the US out of recession.

Obama, on the campaign trail, said he did not want to be judged on what he did in his first 100 days, but over his first 1,000. But expectations for his presidency are exorbitantly high.

The president-elect said last Friday he was rereading the 1984 novel Lincoln in preparation for taking office, but Paul Begala, a member of his transition team, said on the Larry King show that Obama has been quoting from the book The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is also reading it.

The book's author, Jonathan Alter, sees a parallel between Roosevelt and Obama, and said the 15 laws reassured the public that progress was being made against the Depression, even though it was another six years before America came out of it.

"He restored public faith that the government was on their side," said Alter, who is to write a book about Obama's first 100 days. "Obama would be well advised to follow that lead and not get bogged down. The danger for Obama is not that he moves too quickly, but that he moves too slowly."

After Roosevelt took over in 1933, with his inaugural speech promising action and telling his fellow citizens the only thing they had to fear was fear itself, he created dozens of federal programs to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Obama's first 100 days will also be dominated by economic crisis, though not on the scale of the 1930s, when unemployment in the US stood at 25%. Another economic summit, building on the one in Washington this weekend, is to be held in the spring. Obama has promised that one of his first actions will be to introduce a second economic stimulus package, if Bush has not already done so.

Although the $700bn (£400bn) bail-out of the banking, mortgage and insurance industries limits his scope for action, Obama also has to begin implementing promises to introduce a universal health care system, measures to combat climate change and improve schools, as well as deal with two wars, reform taxes and begin the closure of Guantánamo.

Alter said Roosevelt's planning for the White House takeover was "a haphazard, seat of the pants" job, whereas Obama was more organized.