Can Obama bring change without a crisis?

But despite Axelrod’s blasé public attitude, the administration is certainly treating Wednesday as a big occasion, complete with a prime-time news conference and plenty of behind-the-scenes access for reporters to make sure the first draft of history casts glory on Obama.

And that’s reasonable, because Axelrod and his team know 100 days is as good a time as any to take stock of what kind of man Americans elected and how he will govern.

What you can’t do in 100 days is measure success.

History still wrestles with the relative greatness of all 43 of Obama’s predecessors, with rankings rising and falling with the political season.

Abraham Lincoln is hot again, but merely a decade ago Thomas Jefferson was all the rage. Ronald Reagan has vaulted forward on best/worst lists, and Woodrow Wilson has slipped.

But one durable way to classify presidents is whether they change the course of history or are simply actors in a larger drama.

You may love Bill Clinton or hate him, but history won’t show he changed the world. His style of leadership may be seen as better or worse depending on the era, but the last possibility for a Clinton legacy was wiped out with his wife’s failed presidential candidacy.

Depending on your politics, James Polk may be a scoundrel or a visionary. But there is no debating that the Mexican-American War, Manifest Destiny and American free trade very much shaped the world as it is today.

Obama’s election was certainly historic as a symbol of America’s evolution on matters of race. But so far, Obama seems to be looking to find where he fits in as a leader.

Presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did it another way — forcing their way into history.

Roosevelt felt it was his burden to put order to a planet made more chaotic by the slow demise of colonialism. America became the policeman of the world under Roosevelt, and despite several recent moves by Obama, the U.S. remains the final international authority more than 100 years after Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet circumnavigated the globe.

Johnson, who like Roosevelt was thrust into power by an assassination, conjured an ambitious domestic vision in which the work of the New Deal would be completed and expanded. Johnson’s mistakes in Vietnam left an indelible mark on American foreign policy and culture, but his legacy is most acutely felt in domestic affairs.

By dint of his own personal drive, Johnson’s Great Society permanently established the federal government as being ultimately accountable for the cultural and material problems faced by Americans.

Other presidents have become shapers of history by the way in which they reacted to events.

The Islamist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed George W. Bush from a quasi-isolationist to the foremost proponent of pre-emptive war and father of the largest nation-building effort since the Marshall Plan. Bush altered the course of history dramatically to reflect his changed vision.

Franklin Roosevelt reacted with audacious plans to face the twin threats of depression at home and fascism abroad. Because the stakes were so high in both battles, Roosevelt was given wide latitude to execute his plans.

Obama came to office hoping to be a leader like FDR who shapes history by his reaction to a crisis.

But as fears of a second Great Depression give way to acceptance of a long recession, Obama is finding less urgency for his big ideas.

The president sold his hurry-up stimulus plan as a reaction to a crisis. But lawmakers who went along were later burned by a loophole that allowed bonuses for American International Group executives. The plan also racked up debts big enough to help send people into the streets on tax day, and has so far been slow to deliver any stimulation beyond keeping spendthrift local governments afloat.

Those lessons will be remembered as the president attempts to sell his plans for global warming, health care and paying the bill for the failures of General Motors and Chrysler.

If he does not have the chance to make history by his reaction to a crisis, Obama will be forced to follow the path of Teddy Roosevelt and Johnson and implement his world-changing agenda by force of will alone.

And that job, as they would say in LBJ’s Texas Hill Country, is a hard dollar.