But there is an alternative presidential-PM comparison – far more removed from each other in time – that better captures the current political leadership on this side of the Pacific.

The number of characteristics Malcolm Turnbull shares with the longest-serving president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is uncanny.

Each an only child, they grew up to attend elite private schools and then universities, Sydney University and Oxford in Turnbull's case, Harvard and Columbia in Roosevelt's.

Each had an interest in journalism, though Roosevelt's practical fulfilment of this was limited to his time at the The Harvard Crimson, including as managing editor and president, with Turnbull spending a few more years in the game across television and print.

However, by their mid-20s, each was using their primary qualifications in law, with both practising in the corporate sector.

While not always an asset in politics, the two future leaders were independently wealthy long before winning public office. One partial consequence of this was each man had an established profile early in their political careers.

Roosevelt was boosted by his immediate family's blue-blood New York heritage – he was meeting presidents in the White House as early as age five – as well as the name more broadly, most notably via fifth cousin, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt.

Turnbull's prominent business and legal success, then 1999 Republic campaign leadership, made him a household name.

The results for the talented men were quick ascensions to senior positions. Roosevelt was a state senator at 28 and the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate at 38, while Turnbull – thwarted in his first run at federal preselection – was in federal cabinet a little more than two years after arriving in Parliament, and party leader within four years.

Both loved sailing. Roosevelt spent months at a time resting up in a houseboat on the sea anywhere from the Canada to Florida coast after being diagnosed with polio, and would later cause the Secret Service much anxiety as they trailed him during storms and swells on various extended trips in his private boat.

Turnbull is known to get out on Sydney Harbour to compete in an old wooden couta-class boat, or go kayaking while listening to podcasts.

There is even more than a passing physical resemblance between the two, captured in certain photos.

But the 29th Australian PM is sorely lacking in two key areas where the 32nd US president was almost without peer: popularity and policy depth.

Roosevelt swept the nation in his 1932 victory over a deeply unpopular Herbert Hoover, winning the electoral college vote 472-59. He was never troubled by his Republican opponents in an unprecedented – and, constitutionally, never to be repeated – three subsequent wins. Taking 46 of the 48 states in 1936, he delivered the most one-sided electoral college vote in US history (523-8, or 98.5 per cent).

Critically, he took the Congress with him each time, reinforcing his authority with comfortable and often dominant majorities in the House and Senate for 12 years.

Behind it all was a clear policy agenda. FDR's name is synonymous with the New Deal, and with one-quarter of Americans unemployed when he first took office, he had a genuine need to deliver results, and fast.

As American biographer Jean Edward Smith summarises, deliver he did.

"Social security, unemployment compensation, stock market regulation, the federal guarantee of bank deposits, wages and hours legislation, labor's right to bargain collectively, agricultural price supports, rural electrification – all of which we take for granted – did not exist before FDR," he said.

He was the leading statesmen in the key World War II negotiations, but could not be said to have relied on narrow patriotic duty for his political success, having won his third election a year before the US was attacked.

Turnbull has had none of the resounding party support and only brief patches of wide public affection during his two stints as leader.

He took the Liberal leadership by only four votes in a party ballot against a toothless Brendan Nelson in September 2008, and was defeated 42-41 less than 15 months later when the party could no longer stomach his acceptance of an emissions-trading scheme.

The public welcomed the return of the moderate leader after the understandably divided 54-44 first-term party vote last September, handing him a 60 per cent satisfaction rating (a net 38 positive) in a November Newspoll.

This quickly disappeared, with a net disapproval rating since March and now his worst satisfaction rating in the top job, lower even than Tony Abbott at his ousting.

Like FDR, the forward-looking Turnbull speaks with a positive tone, constantly promoting innovation and the "exciting time" to be Australian, but his substantive policy agenda is either unclear to most or failing to pass the Parliament.

His "jobs and growth" mantra quite reasonably targeted those two goals, but the public's caution about him actually being able to deliver positive change – shown by granting him only a one-seat majority – has proven to be well-placed.

The Liberals are divided over superannuation changes the party took to the election. With the complicated task of convincing nine of 11 crossbench senators to agree on any major laws, their proposals on the ending of parental leave "double-dipping" may struggle to become reality.

Their same-sex marriage plebiscite policy survived the election campaign but won't get up in the Senate, highlighting the party's divide on the issue.

On this, climate change policy and the NBN among other issues, the public can see a compromised leader who, aside from a $6 billion plan to cut spending, seems to be missing any argument for genuine reform.

As a result we are left talking about speculative issues such as the security of renewable energy, or the internal government processes for the Solicitor-General.

As John Hewson said last month, "even with his own electoral mandate, it is clear that he is more concerned to just be the PM, not to use the position to pursue a particular reform agenda".

The difficulties Turnbull faces in Parliament and party room are something Roosevelt did not have to deal with, although he inherits an economy with none of the emergency challenges facing Americans of 1933.

Equally, comparing the achievements of a 12-year presidency and a 13-month prime ministership is not fair, in itself.

But FDR had a clear plan from the beginning, with his first 100 days marked by decisive action to temporarily close all banks to calm nervous depositors, provide loans to limit widespread foreclosures on home and farm mortgages, and start getting millions of Americans back into work without blowing the budget.

Turnbull has now had his first 100 days since the election. The public is still waiting for his deliverable deal.