The Cassandra Effect You Can Trust

As the world media expands it's coverage
of the first hundred days of the latest US president
[he might be the last if his reforms pan out
the way he intends them to] let us remember why
these first hundred days has become such a marker.

In 1933 when FDR inherited an economy
that was leading the world into an ever deeper
spiralling economic recession he declared
that in 100 days he would lay the foundation
to reverse the spiral effect, starting in the USA
and spreading outward. Ever since then the media
have marked the first hundred days of US leaders
as if there was a crisis when there was none
-or if there was a crisis it was manageable.

Many new leaders have rhetorically seen
their predecessors policies as 'disasters'
that they have to reverse as if the new leader
was a new broom who will always sweep clean.

Maybe to be even handed about government
we should mark the hundred days
as less the planning time for recovery
from previous crises, real or invented, 
and more as laying the foundations
for disasters to come as, past and present,
government lay down a choice of plans
for how to make the future fail in new ways. 
.