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Biden won’t be a new FDR
Roosevelt passed the New Deal to stave off mass revolt. Absent the same pressures, Joe isn’t likely to follow in his footsteps
Throughout his campaign and in the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden has attempted to drape himself in the mantle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, frequently invoking the name of the New Deal architect in interviews and speeches. Of course, liberal pundits have dutifully parroted this framing in the mainstream press. The best exemplars of this particular brand of partisan mythmaking are Democratic loyalist Jonathan Alter and his daughter Charlotte who wrote matching pieces on the subject in The Daily Beast and Time Magazine, respectively.
Alter the Elder’s article, published on the day of Biden’s inauguration, is titled “Biden’s First 100 Days Will Be the Biggest Since FDR’s.” He writes that Biden’s “American Rescue Plan,” which recently passed the Senate in a narrow party-line vote, is “much more specific — and ambitious — than what FDR did early on.”
He likens Biden’s plan to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days to FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, calling it the “the fastest mobilization in American history.” Biden’s chief of staff hailed this goal as “ambitious,” but the Trump Administration had nearly hit the benchmark of 1…
