FDJoe?

The First Hundred Days of the Biden Administration are officially over, and many comparisons are being made to the administration that provided the concept of the 100 Days in the first place: that of FDR, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

 I’ve been reading about the 1930s lately, and these comparisons seem apt in at least two regards.  Biden, like FDR, has begun and proposed structural, economic, physical and social policy changes that would likely define at least a generation into the future.  Moreover, though many of these changes in both cases have been made elsewhere or on a smaller scale, they are as creative as they are bold.

As Nicholas Kristof wrote so eloquently in last Sunday's New York Times, the basic intention of  FDR's New Deal and Biden's announcement programs for rescue, jobs and family, are the same: to invest in ordinary non-wealthy Americans, and the places where they live, to both improve their lives and jumpstart new economic opportunities and prosperity.  

 FDR's environmental initiatives are less well known but substantial, while Biden would only like to save the planet.  By sincerely and boldly addressing the Depression, FDR very like saved American democracy.  President Biden would like to save it through safeguarding the integrity and equality of the vote, now under determined attack by the Republican party and the state governments they hold. 

 We are still living with the vital help of what FDR began: Social Security, the minimum wage, the banking system, the forty hour week and ban on child labor, and much more.  We still cross the bridges (large and small) and work in the buildings that New Deal programs built.

 Some of Biden’s proposals could be as far reaching and last as long.  Some are extensions of FDR’s: bringing broadband to rural areas is only possible because FDR brought electric power to rural areas.  And Biden even has a version of the Civil Conservation Corps.

 And like FDR, Biden has communicated his plans and rationales for them in succinct and easily understood terms directly to the American people.  FDR did this with his fireside chats on the radio as well as formal speeches.  Biden has begun doing it with a press conference, an address to the nation and his recent address to a joint session of Congress that amounts to a State of the Union. 

 In his analysis of that speech, Jeff Greenfield called his approach “whispering.”  “His speech was delivered almost as conversation, rather than a series of declamations. He kept his voice, for long stretches, at times a near-whisper of empathy or concern—a tone that would have been completely unworkable in a full room,” Greenfield noted.  

Biden used the crowd limited by Covid to speak with the intimacy of FDR’s radio chats.  FDR pictured a family seated around the radio and spoke to them.  Biden was more aware of the room—he kept referring to the congressional audience—but he spoke with that same tone and direct vocabulary.

 But there are significant differences.  There was a more compelling sense of crisis in America, both among the voters and among the power elites and political class in the 1930s.  When FDR took office in March 1933, coal barons came to the White House begging him to take over ownership of their mines (though he didn’t.) 

 It may well be that the majority of American voters today see the global pandemic as threatening now as the 1930s voters saw the global banking crisis.  But a significant number of voters and politicians do not.  Similarly, there are large majorities today in favor of long-delayed changes like support for child care, early childhood education and support, free community college, and efforts to address the climate emergency through American jobs.  But FDR was able to institute programs of such scope with long-term implications because he was also addressing widely recognized crises.  Biden knows that many Americans are hurting, even if our media swirl doesn't.  But if there is a commensurate sense of crisis, it may be what Stewart Udall once called the environmental situation: the quiet crisis.  Will that be enough?   

 A corresponding difference is the overwhelming political support that FDR brought to the White House.  He won 42 of the 48 states in 1932.  He had large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.  President Biden has majority approval in the polls, and his policies also have wide public support.  Though his own popular vote margin was impressive, he did not bring with him large Democratic majorities.  In fact, predictions now are that it is very likely Democrats will lose the House in 2022, and could easily also lose the Senate. 

 So while FDR did not accomplish the New Deal in his first 100 days any more than Biden has accomplished his announced plans—Social Security did not became law until 1935 —he had the time to explain his plans, to obtain comprehension of what he wanted to do and why, and to gather support, especially in Congress.  And he remained so popular that it was politically difficult to oppose him, Democrat or Republican. Though there were recalcitrant individuals and sectional interests, and a fair number of crazies, they did not have the power or the voter support they seem to have now for total opposition.  Perhaps they also did not have the self-righteous shamelessness.

 FDR’s popularity—he won reelection in 1936 by taking 46 of the 48 states—also provided the continuity for his initiatives to be accomplished over time, to be modified or even dropped if they weren’t working, and with a better program substituted. 

 This continuity of administration may be a major reason why President Biden and the congressional Democrats are really interested in a bipartisan infrastructure bill.  They want to lessen the chances of a possible Republican Congress dismantling this program.

 Much can happen in the next year or so.  President Biden may yet become FDJoe.  Or these amazing months, and these amazing proposals, may become a brief and tantalizing glimpse of the America that could be, or could have been, rather than the suicidal mess it can still return to becoming.  A lot depends on the 2022 elections.  And so, a lot depends on what happens from now until then.