Byron York of the Washington Examiner gives a positive review to President Trump’s first three months in office.
The bottom line is that Trump has been a 100 day success when it comes to exercising the executive powers of the presidency. He has done a great deal of what he said he would do, and promises to do more. (The White House is planning a new set of executive orders this week to beat the 100 day deadline.)
On the legislative front, while Trump has been part of a successful Republican effort to turn back parts of the Obama legacy, the president has failed to pass an Obamacare repeal and replace bill, failed to pass tax reform, and for that matter failed to pass any other significant piece of legislation. If Trump wanted to have a signature legislative achievement in his pocket by the 100 day mark, he certainly didn’t act like it.
But it is precisely in the legislative area that the 100 day mark is such an unrealistic measure. Congress acts on its own schedule. Truth be told, next January, on the occasion of Trump’s first year in office, if he has passed either a full-scale Obamacare repeal and replace measure or a major tax reform measure, that would be a reasonably good legislative record for a first year. This is not the New Deal or the Great Society, when there are huge filibuster-proof majorities in Congress and giant bills coming one after another. In today’s atmosphere and party alignments, Trump will do well to get one big thing passed.