Among the most fatuous exercises engaged in by the Fourth Estate after the voters elect a chief executive is the publication of the dreaded “first 100 days” editorial. Having endured a protracted and usually acrimonious political campaign, the long-suffering public is subjected to utterly predictable screeds penned by the new president’s enemies and equally inevitable encomia written by his supporters. All of this blather is predicated on the preposterous notion that it is possible to divine the ultimate success or failure of a presidency a little more than three months after inauguration day.

It’s hardly a surprise that, when President Trump reached this imbecilic benchmark, the nation’s most prominent “news” publications predicted that he was doomed to failure. The Washington Post, for example, cheerfully declared, “America gave Trump another chance. He’s blowing it.” The New York Times confidently explained, “Why Trump’s 100-Day Blitz May Lead to a Historic Bust.” The Wall Street Journal solemnly intoned, “At 100 Days, Trump 2.0 Is in Trouble.” For a sense of how much these learned opinions are actually worth, here’s a representative sample of what was printed in the northern press about our first Republican President:
The illustrious Honest Old Abe has continued during the last week to make a fool of himself and to mortify and shame the intelligent people of this great nation. His speeches have demonstrated the fact that although originally a Herculean rail splitter and more lately a whimsical story teller and side splitter, he is no more capable of becoming a statesman, nay, even a moderate one, than the braying ass can become a noble lion … His weak, wishy-washy, namby-pamby efforts, imbecile in matter, disgusting in manner, have made us the laughing stock of the whole world.
This diatribe appeared in the Salem Advocate, a central Illinois newspaper, as Lincoln traveled to Washington for his 1861 inauguration. The Advocate was not alone among northern newspape...