here are two iron laws of American presidential politics. We owe both of them to a Roosevelt. The first is that every administration needs a foreign policy doctrine named after the President. After President Monroe, the tradition took a hundred year break – Lincoln had more important things to do, and no one remembers any of the post-Civil War presidents – but it was revived by Teddy Roosevelt, who offered his “Corollary” to Monroe’s doctrine.
The second is that every administration is evaluated at the hundred day mark. This tradition began as a way to sum up FDR’s burst of legislative activity in early 1933, but as no administration since then has matched FDR’s hyperactive pace, it has became the prescribed moment to describe and explain the new administration’s doctrine.
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