I've been seeing an awful lot of this lately:
There’s been a lot written about the parallels between Biden and FDR. But there’s one less-covered parallel that sticks out to me: Like FDR, Biden is trying to enact a big agenda to revitalize faith in American democracy. https://t.co/0rvSCeGvab
— German Lopez (@germanrlopez) April 30, 2021
I suppose it's reasonable to say that Biden would like to be the next FDR—what Democrat wouldn't?—but there's a big difference between the two: FDR passed lots of permanent social programs that changed the country forever while Biden hasn't. Other than that, they're nearly the same!
Honestly, I really don't get the Biden-FDR comparisons. So far Biden has proposed a bunch of stuff, and if he passes it all he will certainly go down as a pretty influential president. But so far he hasn't passed any of it and there are some serious doubts about whether he can. For starters, he's limited to whatever he can pass via reconciliation, and beyond that he can only pass programs that are supported by every single Democrat in the Senate. This is . . . difficult.
I'll be rooting for him, but the FDR comparisons really ought to wait until he's accomplished a few big things. Permanent things. That's going to be some tough sledding.