Illustration by KAL

EVER since Franklin Roosevelt put the building blocks of the New Deal in place in his first 100 days in office, presidents have been subjected to the 100-days test. For that brief spell, they have a unique opportunity to put their imprint on history—a honeymoon period when the public gives them the benefit of the doubt and Congress defers to their popular mandate—and they squander it at their peril.

One of the most striking things about Barack Obama is that his 100 days seem to have already begun. Mr Obama repeatedly insists that America only has “one president at a time”. But since election day that “one president” seems to have been the junior senator from Illinois rather than the former governor of Texas.

Mr Obama has dominated the news with a relentless succession of carefully timed and often dramatic press conferences. He has embraced his former nemesis by making Hillary Clinton secretary of state. He has outraged the left by keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon and making James Jones, a former NATO supreme commander who campaigned for John McCain, his national security adviser. He has reassured the markets by putting Tim Geithner in the Treasury and appointing Larry Summers as his White House economics guru. And he has made history by appointing Eric Holder as America's first black attorney-general. The Justice Department, which once spied on Martin Luther King, will now be in the hands of a child of the civil-rights revolution.

This is partly deliberate stagecraft. Mr Obama and his advisers understand the importance of controlling the news. They have also long been obsessed by presenting a “presidential” image of Mr Obama, a man who was nothing more than a state senator four years ago.

In June he appeared at a Democratic governors' meeting in Chicago accompanied by a presidential-looking seal—an eagle clutching an olive branch in one claw and arrows in the other and emblazoned with the slogan Vero Possimus (Yes we can). The seal soon disappeared in a hail of ridicule. In July he flew to Europe on a plane that looked remarkably like Air Force One and delivered a public address to hundreds of thousands of swooning Germans (his plans to give his speech at the Brandenburg Gate were eventually foiled, so he had to make do with a lesser monument). At the Democratic convention he gave a speech from a stage decorated with Greek pillars. This is not a man who is uncomfortable with the trappings of power.

But much more important than stagecraft is the force of circumstances. Americans are not only desperate for the change that Mr Obama offered. They are desperate for someone to fill the vacuum at the heart of government. The Bush presidency has been shrinking ever since his second-term agenda (primarily Social Security reform) collapsed in Congress and his remaining credibility was blown away in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

Mr Bush gave a rare television interview to ABC News this week, in which he expressed sympathy for the victims of the recession and lamented intelligence failures before the Iraq war. But for most of the past year he has been missing in action—shunted to the sidelines by the McCain campaign and wheeled out only when the dismal economic news made a statement from the top man impossible to avoid. A president who enjoyed a highly successful first 100 days of his own—including a big tax cut and a sweeping reform of education—has all but vanished.

The scale of the global economic crisis has also forced Mr Obama to adopt a quasi-presidential stance. The bad news has been so relentless (on December 1st the Dow dropped by 7.7% on news that the economy is officially in recession), and the policy response by the powers that be has been so confused (Hank Paulson first promised to buy up bad debt and then decided to take stakes in the banks instead), that America has sometimes seemed to be on the edge of a full-scale meltdown. Add the terrorist outrages in Mumbai to the mix and the president-elect has had no choice but to seize the limelight.

The Bush administration has done as much as it can to reassure the markets that the transition will be seamless. And Mr Obama has done as much as he can to show that he has the wherewithal to run the economy—giving regular press conferences on the subject and outlining his proposed stimulus plan. A lame-duck Congress may even pass a version of that plan before Mr Obama comes to office. FDR had to wait until his inauguration before unleashing an avalanche of legislation. Mr Obama may be able to go one better and legislate from the “The Office of the President Elect”, as his new podium now has it.

The downside

The premature start to Mr Obama's first 100 days is rife with risk. Presidents inevitably use up their stock of political capital as they spend it. They also gradually start to disappoint their friends and allies. Mr Obama is shielded to some extent by his race and charisma. But he has already sorely tested the patience of some of his most loyal supporters—first by appointing so many Clintonites to high office and then by keeping Mr Gates at the Pentagon. Can it be long before the netroots begin to complain that they have been duped—that “change” is simply more of the same? And can it be long before the ravening beast that is the media tires of the story about the first black president and starts looking for Mr Obama's feet of clay?

Against that it must be said that the imprint Mr Obama is already putting on history is impressive. He has demonstrated that he is self-confident enough to surround himself with big brains and strong personalities. He is also signalling that he intends to govern pragmatically—changing America's foreign policy by degrees, not precipitously, and focusing his energies on America's miserable economy. So far Mr Obama's premature 100 days have gone better than anybody could have hoped.