President Joe Biden promised to be the country’s most liberal chief executive since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and historians say he is keeping that campaign pledge.
Biden has welcomed comparisons between himself and Roosevelt, the country’s only four-term president, who led the public out of the Great Depression with his expansive New Deal programs.
But experts say a major problem for the 46th president is his seeming preoccupation with his own place in history while not heeding all the lessons of the past as Democrats brace for what likely will be tough 2022 and 2024 election cycles.
REPUBLICANS NARROW THEIR BLAME ON BIDEN
Biden has elbowed aside his centrist politics, espoused over almost half a century in public life, in favor of more liberal policy positions during his first 100 days in office, according to author and historian David Pietrusza.
“The great flow of history is sweeping Biden along, and in radically progressive times, he is keeping his promise to be the most progressive president in history,” Pietrusza told the Washington Examiner.
He and other historians base their argument on the passage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package. Supporters describe the measure, rammed through Congress this month without any Republican backing, as one of the largest anti-poverty pieces of legislation in a generation thanks to tax credits and direct cash payments. Critics contend the package is wasteful and not well targeted.
Others, such as Ronald Reagan biographer and Republican strategist Craig Shirley, define Biden’s liberalism more broadly by his “naive belief in government” and its ability “to solve all ills.”
“Reagan, of course, believed in the individual. Biden believes in the state, and FDR believed in the state,” Shirley said. “The pandemic is just a convenient excuse for government.”
But Biden is at the mercy of another historic tide: one that shows governing parties typically relinquishing control of the House, the Senate, or both after their first midterm elections cycle. The trend is often exacerbated by a backlash against so-called big government, Pietrusza said.
“It will be interesting to see if he suffers significant midterm reversals, whether he, like Bill Clinton, shifts toward [the] center,” Pietrusza added of Biden.
Aware that he has a narrow window to enact his legislative agenda while Democrats control Congress, Biden last week gathered top historians at the White House for a two-hour meeting.
“I’m no FDR, but…” Biden reportedly told the group as they discussed the scope of presidential power and the political calculus involved in going “big” and “fast.”
Biden then addressed the topic during his first stand-alone press conference when he was asked whether he would introduce a gun control bill or take executive action as Democrats demand a response to this month’s public mass shootings.
“As you’ve all observed, successful presidents, better than me, have been successful, in large part, because they know how to time what they’re doing — order it, decide, and prioritize what needs to be done,” Biden said.
The issue for Biden is twofold. Without 60 votes in the Senate, he is limited in how, or even if, he can implement gun control, immigration, and voting rights reforms as he concentrates on COVID-19.
But if he endorses efforts to roll back the Senate’s filibuster rule, which protects minority rights in the chamber, he opens himself up to be lambasted by Republicans for governmental overreach. The GOP has already embraced the complaint after the president included irrelevant provisions and allocated long-term funding in the coronavirus package.
Shirley agreed Biden mirroring Roosevelt created “a lot of traps” concerning overspending and the perception of being Washington-centric.
“Biden has an utter belief in committees and bureaus, and that will be the undoing of America,” Shirley said. “He will eventually become paralyzed with indecision.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Biden’s meeting with the historians. Psaki said the conversation was “a moment to step back and reflect” given the challenges the country faces.
“It’s important to learn from what worked and didn’t work in the past and gain perspective from people who study that,” Psaki told reporters last week.
For Pietrusza, Theodore Roosevelt and other “more activist” presidents have also been cognizant of their place in history.
“When presidents were essentially administrators, I would suspect few fancied themselves as great historical figures,” Pietrusza said, referring to Abraham Lincoln.
Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy were examples of the opposite, according to Pietrusza. After Hoover left the White House in 1933, he spent three decades justifying “everything he ever did” before his death, Pietrusza continued. And Kennedy was equally as historically minded and image-conscious, evidenced by his book, Profiles in Courage.
“FDR, though he never had a post-presidency, certainly had similar thoughts. He was not only the first president to enjoy an official presidential library, but [he] designed the building himself,” Pietrusza said.
But Shirley, who listed Clinton as another president who met with historians, advised commanders in chief against focusing too much on the future to the detriment of the present.
“They don’t worry about the here and now. They tend to be dreamers, and that means they get in trouble,” Shirley said.
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During the campaign, Biden made the point of traveling to Warm Springs, Georgia, the home of FDR’s Little White House. Roosevelt sought polio treatment from the region’s mineral springs for years before dying there in 1945. Biden spoke about Roosevelt’s funeral procession and an anecdote of a man insisting the late president “knew” him.
“Few words better describe the kind of president our nation needs right now,” Biden said last fall. “That’s the kind of president I will be.”
