Wayne O'Leary

Bipartisan Joe

You like Joe. I like Joe. Everybody likes Joe. But exactly who is Joe? That’s the question of the hour.

Since the Biden administration’s inception, there’s been a notion propagated by some Democrats (part sincere belief and part wishful thinking) that the president is, or will become, the reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt, standing astride a new New Deal. Seven months into his term, one realization has become evident: Joe Biden is a lot of things, but he’s not FDR 2.0. Nor does his government resemble the New Deal of the 1930s except, perhaps, in aspiration.

For starters, FDR was the ultimate inspirational leader, one of the great communicators of the past century. Biden doesn’t come close as a rhetorician; he lacks the capability to move the nation with words. Empathy? Yes. Folksiness? Yes. Speeches that will outlive his passing and enter the history books? Sorry.

There’s more to a successful presidency, of course. There’s a president’s vision of where he wants to lead the country and the causes that motivate him. So far, beyond a vague desire to assist the working middle class he identifies with, the cause closest to Biden’s heart appears to be the concept of bipartisanship, a philosophy of governing honed by 50 years of maneuvering in the hallways of Washington and conferring endlessly in Senate cloakrooms.

FDR was never a senator, and legislative compromises were not his métier. He relished the pursuit of partisan objectives and sought political realignment to create a national liberal party. President Joe, on the other hand, seems to view bipartisanship as an end in itself. At times, he leaves the impression that no legislative initiatives the opposition (or his own “moderates”) view unfavorably are worth pursuing and no legislative decisions arrived at without negotiation are legitimate.

Roosevelt emerged from the progressive wing of his party and overcame party conservatives to be nominated; Biden, a product of his era’s neoliberal centrist Democratic politics, defeated his party’s own progressives to secure nomination. As chief executive, he’s appeared downright uncomfortable taking on opposition members of the Senate club whose membership card he still treasures, especially over ideological questions.

Oddly enough, the president the current incumbent most resembles is not FDR, but Republican Dwight Eisenhower (tangled syntax and all), whose bipartisan style, like Biden’s, was to straddle the middle — he accepted established New Deal reforms — and let things evolve as they would. People liked “Ike” the way they appear to like Joe. Ike had a winning smile; so does Joe. Ike was comfortable as an old shoe; so is Joe. Both presided over countries in turmoil and anxious to return to normality — from the frustrating Korean War in Eisenhower’s time to the equally frustrating war on coronavirus today.

In one respect, however, Biden is more of an activist than Ike. He’s spending money, something Eisenhower, who worried constantly about the budget and the national debt, was loath to do. Our pandemic-reactive president is spending without reservation and deficit-financing where necessary. His American Rescue Plan, the stimulus program passed in March, directed $1.9 trillion to combat COVID-19 and the economic downturn it caused; it distributed, among other things, $1,400 per person in direct payments to individuals and temporarily created a new child tax credit worth thousands of dollars annually to families with dependents, all financed by federal borrowing.

This has been supplemented by a pending two-part infrastructure outlay, presently working its way through Congress. It includes a “hard” physical-infrastructure package (roads, bridges, and other public works), originally estimated at $2.3 trillion, but slashed to $1.2 trillion ($550 billion in actual new appropriations) by bipartisan Senate conferees; and a “soft” social-infrastructure proposal covering human needs (family leave, child care, college tuition, expanded health care, etc.), initially budgeted at $1.8 trillion, but increased by Democratic progressives to $3.5 trillion subject to congressional legislative reconciliation. The former expenditure is to be funded by a mix of government funds, the latter by taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Altogether, the Biden spending program, which would raise the federal deficit by $3 trillion, dwarfs FDR’s investments. But there’s a critical added difference. The Biden program basically throws money at identified problems, many of them admittedly in need of thrown money, whereas FDR’s program introduced substantive structural change into the socio-economic system and altered power relationships. Roosevelt’s partisan innovations included farm price supports, banking reorganization and deposit insurance, Social Security, federalized public power, guaranteed collective-bargaining for unions, Wall Street financial regulation, and so forth, all placing limits on the supremacy of the marketplace.

Current Democratic progressives envisioned similar fundamental reforms, but thus far the White House has dragged its heals. Items on the progressive agenda abandoned or placed on a back burner under Biden include the following: filibuster removal, Supreme Court reorganization, a Green New Deal, student-debt elimination, a wealth tax, enhanced Medicare or a health-care public option, voting-rights guarantees, expanded gun control, regulation of drug prices, a $15/hr. minimum wage, and the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act for labor.

Elements of some of these proposals might appear in the tentative social-infrastructure bill, if Senate Finance Chairman Bernie Sanders has his way, but the bill’s passage through reconciliation looks increasingly iffy. The Sinema-Manchin duo is already erecting roadblocks. The administration, for its part, seems quite satisfied with its bipartisan traditional-infrastructure achievement and its new accommodation with Republicans.

A crunch is coming for marginalized Democratic progressives. If, as expected, the $3.5 trillion social-infrastructure bill fails in the 50-50 Senate, or major parts of it are stripped away, House progressives, who are committed to voting for a unified infrastructure bill or none at all, will have a decision to make. Will they knuckle under and go along with a shell of their original demands (namely, another Sinema/Manchin-orchestrated compromise), or will they revolt? As is ever the case in such circumstances, they will be faced with the ultimate establishment squelch: If infrastructure goes down, it’s on you, progressives!

Meanwhile, our bipartisan president looks more and more like Ike. Eisenhower had two major historical accomplishments: ending the Korean War and building the federal interstate highway system. Biden, it appears, will have two as well: getting COVID-19 under control and revamping the country’s physical infrastructure. Possible comparisons of the current incumbent to FDR will have to wait until after 2022 at the earliest.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2021

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