We have Franklin Delano Roosevelt to thank for the notion that there’s something particularly special about an administration’s first 100 days. In the summer of 1933 (presidents of the United States weren’t inaugurated until March back then), in a radio address to the American people, FDR laid out the achievements of the previous three and a bit months, setting a benchmark for his political successors. In fact, Roosevelt was referring not to the length of his own time in office, but to the first 100 days of the congressional term, which had seen the passage of 15 major bills laying the foundation for the New Deal that would ultimately lift the US out of the Great Depression. Regardless, the idea of the first 100 days as an early barometer of the performance and prospects of successive American presidents gained traction over the following decades before being adopted across the democratic world. After all, it makes sense; flush with victory, with general acceptance of its mandate to govern even from those who didn’t vote for it, a new government’s political capital should be highest in these opening months. If now is not the time for grasping nettles, shaking trees, facing down naysayers and doing all the other things that will become progressively harder as the public mood sours, then when is? READ MORE As a result, the 100-day deadline is now baked into the media narrative accompanying every new government. Opinion polls are taken. Critiques are written. Scorecards are drawn up. But there is a problem. In the decades since Roosevelt’s radio address, the legislative and administrative apparatus of governing in most countries has become ever larger, more unwieldy and more difficult to change course. Good luck to any political leader in the 21st century seeking to emulate Roosevelt’s breakneck legislative record. Good luck too, to anyone like Minister for Housing James Browne, who might feel the need to spend some time reading themselves into their brief, having been handed (by some accounts at short notice) responsibility for solving the State’s most intractable problem. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the power and reach of government has grown but its capacity to enact meaningful, visible improvements to people’s lives within the normal electoral cycle of four or five years appears to be diminishing. It’s not just here that unfavourable comparisons are drawn between current inaction and the successful mass social house-building projects of the 20th century. Rising public frustration over sclerotic public administration is fuelling cynicism and is a factor in the collapse of trust in public institution. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” observed Leo Tolstoy in the opening of Anna Karenina. In fact, the diagnosis may vary from place to place but the symptoms of the current political malaise are strikingly similar. Whether it’s the slow economic puncture of post-Brexit Britain or the self-inflicted underinvestment of the German debt brake, internal debates over each country’s failures tend towards a self-lacerating national exceptionalism that is not borne out by the evidence. What they all have in common is a swell of frustration at the apparent inability of the state to address fundamental problems: crumbling infrastructure; inadequate public services; intergenerational inequality; a sense of dread in the face of global instability and climate change. Hovering under these are long-term unresolved structural questions over government debt and demographic change. Meanwhile, an ever-accelerating 24-hour news cycle adds to the sense of helplessness and renders the concept of slow, incremental change implausible. [ Deportation anxiety in Irish America: ‘I would have a clean slate before travelling’Opens in new window ] What to do? Oddly enough, in the US, Roosevelt is now an avatar for both left and right. Despite being led by centre-left figures like New York Times journalist Ezra Klein, the “abundance” movement, which harks back to the muscular building programmes of the New Deal, is highly critical of Democrat-run states such as New York and California, where over-regulation and Nimbyism have led to a “kludgocracy” – under which everything gets gummed up in never-ending cycles of reviews and appeals so that homes don’t get built, new public transit lines spiral over budget and projects which should take years end up taking decades. That will resonate with Irish voters beaten down by the interminable sagas of Metrolink and the national children’s hospital, along with the even more damaging failures in water and energy provision. Institutional inertia and political procrastination don’t just have an opportunity cost in terms of homes not built and lives put on hold. They feed a vicious circle of distrust which offers an opening to sinister forces. Curtis Yarvin, the pet intellectual of influential right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel, may be merely trolling the libs when he cites Roosevelt’s presidency as a model for his vision of a post-democratic system of autocratic government, but he is tapping into an openness to strongman politics which is showing up in opinion polls, particularly among the young. Which brings us, inevitably, to the current occupant of the White House. Unlike his 1930s predecessor, Donald Trump hasn’t seen a single piece of legislation passed in his first 100 days. Instead, he has been testing – and sometimes breaking – the outer limits of his constitutional powers to mount damaging assaults on federal agencies, foreign aid and universities, along with performatively cruel acts of vengeance on immigrants. Trump’s 100 days have been a dark parody of Roosevelt’s. And it remains far too early to guess at what the long-term institutional consequences will be. The budgetary savings wrought by Elon Musk, for example, have achieved only a tiny fraction of the trillions that were promised. Perhaps in 50 years’ time, historians will record how the start of Trump’s second term, in all its swirling folly, finally put an end to the hoary old myth of the first 100 days. Or, maybe, they will explain how political leaders finally woke up to the threat which excessive proceduralism and inertia posed to their credibility. But every society creates political narratives, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this one has run its course.