100 Days and 75 Days

This image from today's New York Times exactly captures the hope, in some ways premature, for Barack Obama to get to work and fix America's problems. The photograph by Doug Mills of the Times, and the mise en scene provided by the campaign, suggest a president sitting with his cabinet in the White House.

Americans -- and the American press -- have celebrated the election of Barack Obama on Tuesday night, and by the next day they wanted him to take charge. Weeks ago, Daniel Schorr, a great figure in American journalism, expressed the longing that if Obama were elected he should immediately be welcomed as a partner by the current occupant so that he could get to work on change. Schorr obviously did not expect that to happen, but did suggest that perhaps we should move up inauguration day. Joe Nocera in the Times, in the story that accompanies Doug Mills's photograph, also expresses the widespread impatience for the president-elect to act, and act now.

Why?

It is of course Constitutionally inappropriate for a president-elect to start governing until inauguration day. Herbert Hoover tried hard to get Franklin D. Roosevelt to join him in economic and financial planning before inauguration, but Roosevelt quite properly would not be drawn. In those days, the wait was even longer, as inauguration was not until March 4. The change to January 20 came in a Constitutional amendment before Roosevelt's second inauguration.

On the other hand, in 2000, the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, which infamously declared the recount over, thus making George W. Bush president, despite his loss by more than 500,000 votes in the popular election and the fact of still-uncounted votes in Florida, came on December 12 -- giving George Bush too little time for adequate transition planning.

Americans may be forgiven for not being Constitutional scholars -- but Barack Obama actually is a Constitutional scholar, and he seems to understand well the nuances of presidential action. His repeated reminder during yesterday's press conference that he is not yet president, while still indicating his preferences on some policy matters, seemed a reasonable attempt to balance the Constitutional proprieties and the urgencies of public expectations.

Perhaps our ever-shortening news cycle and our saturation in the images of the campaign have helped us forget that there are schedules other than those of cable TV news and the Internet. We're about to get a reminder, and it already seems like a long wait. It will be interesting to see how the Obama campaign manages the problem of visibility versus Constitutional reticence as these 75 days before the first 100 days tick away.

photo credit: Doug Mills, New York Times, 8 November 2008.

see:

Joe Nocera, "Talking Business -- 75 Years Later, a Nation Hopes for Another FDR," New York Times, 8 November 2008.