A Dem in the White House? Cue the FDR analogies
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FROMA HARROP
Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar plans to revive the economy, fix America’s infrastructure and ease poverty have spawned comparisons between him and Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the 100-day mark of the Biden presidency, David Gergen, who has advised presidents of both parties, wrote, “Biden is off to an excellent start arguably, one of the best since Roosevelt.”
And Biden hasn’t discouraged such talk. He now has a giant portrait of FDR in the Oval Office.
While there may be likenesses between those two presidents’ agendas, the less glamorous Harry Truman also deserves inspirational face time. Truman and Biden both came from modest small-town origins. Unlike the aristocratic Roosevelt, they knew about middle-class striving.
Wishful comparisons of President Biden to Franklin Delano Roosevelt have been coming fast and furious.
In a New York Times essay, the liberal author Jonathan Alter dubbed Biden âFDRâs heirâ and declared that by signing the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package, the president âhas made a good startâ at duplicating what âRoosevelt did amid the Depression.â In another column, the Timesâs Jamelle Bouie hailed the stimulus bill as âFDR-sizedâ and said it âcompares favorablyâ with anything FDR signed in his first 100 days. âBiden is off to an excellent start â arguably, one of the best since Roosevelt,â kvelled David Gergen, a former adviser to four presidents. Time magazine announced even before the election that Biden was âpositioning himself as a modern FDRâ and agreed that Roosevelt could be âBidenâs closest presidential parallel.â
FROMA HARROP
oe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar plans to revive the economy, fix America’s infrastructure and ease poverty have spawned comparisons between him and Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the 100-day mark of the Biden presidency, David Gergen, who has advised presidents of both parties, wrote, “Biden is off to an excellent start arguably, one of the best since Roosevelt.”
And Biden hasn’t discouraged such talk. He now has a giant portrait of FDR in the Oval Office.
But while there may be likenesses between those two presidents’ agendas, the less glamorous Harry Truman also deserves inspirational face time. Truman and Biden both came from modest small-town origins. Unlike the aristocratic Roosevelt, they knew about middle-class striving.
Harrop: Biden’s economic agenda may be more Truman than FDR By Froma Harrop
Share: Froma Harrop is a columnist for Creators.com. Email: fharrop@gmail.com Photo
Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar plans to revive the economy, fix America’s infrastructure and ease poverty have spawned comparisons between him and Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the 100-day mark of the Biden presidency, David Gergen, who has advised presidents of both parties, wrote, “Biden is off to an excellent start arguably, one of the best since Roosevelt.”
And Biden hasn’t discouraged such talk. He now has a giant portrait of FDR in the Oval Office, right across from the Resolute Desk.