With President Bush observing the benchmark of 100 days in office today, Vice-President Dick Cheney insisted yesterday that "the president is very much in charge of the show".
Appearing on Fox News Sunday to discuss the administration's record, Mr Cheney discounted any notion he is the real power in the White House, as one recent cartoon depicted.
"That's silly," Mr Cheney said. "The fact of the matter is the president is very much in charge of the show. Anything I do is because he specifically directs me to do it. He makes all the key decisions."
The first 100 days in office has been a benchmark for presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt moved quickly to pull the US out of the Depression. Mr Bush will mark the occasion with a White House lunch today to which the entire US House and Senate have been invited in a gesture of bipartisanship.
Traditionally, 100 days into the administration of a new president is a time for observers and historians to weigh in with assessments of his performance. This time around, Mr Bill Clinton's first 100 days out of the White House has proven nearly as memorable as his successor's arrival, they say.
"There's no question. It's been a disaster," said Mr Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "There's been nothing quite like it in terms of 100 days."
An outgoing president typically leaves Washington and quietly finds another path, whether it's charity work, book writing or even golf, experts say.
"Partly that's because they're old and partly because they have enough sensitivity to say that January 20th is the new person's day," Mr Hess said. "This ex-president from Day One didn't play by those rules."
Before retiring, Mr Clinton issued a round of pardons that included the financier, Mr Mark Rich, who fled the US in 1983 under indictment for tax evasion and racketeering. He also pardoned four Hasidic Jews, whose New York town turned out solidly for Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the US Senate.
A US Attorney, Ms Mary Jo White, is investigating several of the pardons, and, in the fallout, a number of invitations for Mr Clinton to make high-paying appearances were withdrawn.
Then there was an uproar over the White House furnishings that the Clintons moved to their house in suburban Chappaqua, New York.
Topping it off, Mr Clinton's first choice of office space in Manhattan would have cost taxpayers nearly $800,000 a year. He dropped the idea and found more modest space in Harlem.
While the heart of the trouble is the poor judgment behind the Rich pardon, Mr Clinton's critics have made much of his error, said New York magazine political columnist Michael Tomasky.
The events of the last 100 days also seem to have put to rest the tantalising rumour that Mr Clinton could run for mayor of New York City when Mr Rudolph Giuliani leaves this year.