I have a piece in The New York Times this morning arguing that the first-100-days standard for presidents is an arbitrary benchmark that encourages change for its own sake while punishing prudence. Presidents who simply want to govern never stand a chance by that measure, because we tend to assess presidents by the scale and speed of change and not by its necessity. It’s possible, I argue, that President Biden confronted crises on the scale of Franklin Roosevelt (who borrowed the 100-days standard from Napoleon to describe his blitz against the Great Depression). But it’s less likely that the nation faces such a crisis every four years beginning on Inauguration Day. The piece is available available here.