Biden's Nimble Reagan Take-down

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Archive

After President Joe Biden’s address to Congress on Wednesday, the comparisons to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. John are flying thick and fast. Like these two earlier Democratic lodestars, Biden is laying out a transformational agenda.

But a more nuanced comparison could prove helpful here. Nick Bryant lays one out in his astute Washington Post opinion piece: Biden isn’t FDR. He’s the anti-Reagan.”

There have, of course, been substantial FDR overtones going back to Biden’s presidential campaign. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) set the template in February 2020 with his powerful endorsement -- which proved instrumental not just in Biden’s South Carolina primary victory but for all races that followed. Clyburn capped his announcement with: “I know Joe. We know Joe. But, most importantly, Joe knows us.” [11:30 minutes in]

Clyburn’s words echoed a famous and compelling story about Roosevelt: As FDR’s casket was carried through Washington’s Union Station, one bystander was crying particularly hard. “Did you know President Roosevelt?” a reporter asked. “No,” the man replied, “I didn’t know President Roosevelt. But he knew me”

These potent FDR comparisons continued through Biden’s first 100 days in office. Not just in dramatically expansive policies, political analysts note, the two leaders also share a similarly optimistic “first-class temperament.”

Others see Biden as closer to LBJ, tackling systemic racial and cultural problems with sweeping social programs. The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has written about both FDR and LBJ (and spent a great deal of time with the latter), insists that Biden is far more like Johnson.

Even with these striking similarities, however, it is Biden’s skill at dismantling Reagan’s policies that appears most stunning.

Ronald Reagan stands out as a masterful communicator -- one of the most effective to sit in the Oval Office. With his genial and sunny presentation of a sharp-edged conservatism, Reagan was able to shift much of the nation – including Reagan Democrats -- rightward. To achieve this, Reagan fueled a fervent distrust of government.

He launched this effort with his 1981 Inaugural Address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Consider, throughout Reagan’s presidency, one of his favorite go-to jokes was: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help. " He never failed to get a big laugh.

John Harris, the co-founder of Politico, helped explain Biden’s effectiveness in a column posted late Wednesday, which laid out how the president deftly presented his grandly ambitious New Deal-style proposals as “No Big Deal.” Biden’s plain language and “just folks” manner seem able to cool down today’s hot-button issues.

Biden imbues progressives’ aspirations with a glow of moderation. “Green New Deal programs” morph into “jobs programs.”

We’ll see how this plays out over the next 100 days.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library