Commentary: New president's 100 days of pressure

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" and is completing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/zelizer.hundred/index.html

A lesson to be remembered:

Trying to strengthen his credentials as a reformer, Carter took aim at pork barrel spending, opposing specific items that President Ford had included in his final budget that funded more than 300 water projects across the country. Carter dismissed the proposal as a classic example of congressional pork. He sent a letter to Congress stating that 19 of the projects would be cut.