Trump may have the 'most executive orders' since Truman. But what did they accomplish?
By Andrew Rudalevige April 28 at 6:00 AM
President Trump’s first 100 days have been spectacularly effective, according to the White House. Aides bragged this week that the president will have issued 32 executive orders by the 100-day mark — “more than any president in half a century!” as Kellyanne Conway gushed. “TAKING EXECUTIVE ACTION,” announced a White House news release on Tuesday: “In office, President Trump has accomplished more in his first 100 days than any other President since Franklin Roosevelt.”
Well, the math is mostly right. The news release shifted the count from 32 to 30 Trump executive orders (EOs). But either way it’s true that, by Saturday, Trump will have issued more EOs in his first 100 days in office than any president since Harry Truman issued more than 50, after taking the reins in 1945 after FDR’s death. (In Truman’s first 100 days after election in his own right, he issued 25.) The next highest count is Lyndon Johnson’s 26 orders from early 1965. By comparison, Barack Obama issued 19; George W. Bush, 11; Clinton, 13; George H.W. Bush, 11; and Reagan, 18.
Trump wins! The prize is … well, raw numbers like this are not very meaningful — and in the present case, they are more than a little ironic.
Which orders count for what?
Trump’s executive orders, like those across presidential history, vary wildly in their significance. A simple count doesn’t tell us much. The substantive content of any given directive matters greatly for whether a president has “accomplished more,” or anything at all, as discussed further below.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/28/trump-may-have-the-most-executive-orders-since-truman-but-what-did-they-accomplish/?utm_term=.9427212daf24&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
