By Leah Asmelash, CNN
Updated 4:20 PM ET, Fri January 22, 2021 (CNN)When President Joe Biden sat down after his inauguration to sign a slew of executive orders, alongside the stack of navy folders was a wooden box, situated within easy reach.
Inside that box, ready for use, lay a neat row of gold-trimmed navy Cross Century II pens.
But why so many pens? As Biden continues to sign more executive orders 17 on Wednesday alone, and 13 more in the days following it raises a question: Is one not enough?
Well, like everything to do with the White House, it s mainly because of tradition.
Why do presidents use so many pens to sign documents and what happens to them?
When President Joe Biden sat down after his inauguration to sign a slew of executive orders, alongside the stack of navy folders was a wooden box, situated within easy reach.
Inside that box, ready for use, lay a neat row of gold-trimmed navy Cross Century II pens.
But why so many pens? As Biden continues to sign more executive orders 17 on Wednesday alone, and 13 more in the days following it raises a question: Is one not enough?
Well, like everything to do with the White House, it’s mainly because of tradition.
The first 100 days of a two-term presidency mark about 3% of the eight-year span, but since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this brief early window of opportunity has been used to judge a new commander in chief’s agenda.
President Biden s first 100 days are sure to look different than those of Democrats past, and not just due to the unprecedented challenge of a pandemic. Economic challenge was met by greater spending under Barack Obama than by his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, and even more federal largesse will be doled out by Biden if Congress gives him his way. Other priorities have differed too.
The last time Democrats had both chambers of Congress and the White House, Barack Obama had overcome the odds and had been elected the first Black president.
When Congressman Peter DeFazio recalls those two years of Democratic Party control, he says Obama made a mistake in economic recovery after listening “to that jerk Larry Summers” when pushing for the Troubled Assets Relief Package (TARP) legislation during the Great Recession, which resulted tax cuts too small to notice and minimal job creation.
Summers was President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, and during Obama’s first year served as the director of the National Economic Council.