Where Have You Gone, Franklin Delano: The End of The 2021 Legislative Circus & FDR Comparisons

President Biden and VP Harris in the OVval Office under a portrait of FDR, March 21, 2021. Photo by The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Democracy might die in the dark, but in the meantime the self-styled “world’s greatest deliberative body” finally adjourned their work for the year in the darkness of 4 in the morning Saturday. The gaveling of the end rather felt like a mercy killing to the long-terminal but artificially and hopefully preserved legislative year. A legislative year that started with high hopes of a Democratic DC power trifecta and a Biden-powered agenda swelled with rhetoric of “sweeping change” and “FDR-like” legislative success.

“Copying Roosevelt, Biden Wanted a Fast Start. Now Comes the Hard Part.” – New York Times, January 31, 2021

“Joe Biden is no FDR — but if he keeps listening to progressives, he could be” – MSNBC, April 28, 2021

“Biden’s First 100 Days Will Be the Biggest Since FDR’s” – The Daily Beast, January 20, 2021

“The Most Vital 100 Days Since FDR” – Foreign Policy, April 12th, 2021

And Biden’s own Chief of Staff Ron Klain wasn’t being very subtle about the comparison either:

Cabinet edition: How it started, how it’s going pic.twitter.com/EIDEUb32d3

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) April 2, 2021

Contrary to the New Deal chorus that was permeating the political discourse through the much ballyhooed “first 100 days” of the Biden Administration, the man that more than any other powered the Biden primary comeback was not singing the same tune. From Politico, April 13th:

Klain has twice tweeted an FDR quote, “action, and action now” — both times in reference to Biden. In a more explicit comparison, he tweeted side-by-side photos of FDR’s Cabinet and Biden’s Cabinet. And he’s also promoted comments by columnists and media personalities linking the former president and the current one.

But House Majority Whip JIM CLYBURN (D-S.C.) has a different take.

The Biden ally, widely credited with turning around the former vice president’s bid for the nomination, brought up the FDR comparisons in a recent interview when discussing ways Biden could cement an outsized legacy.

“See I’m one who feel, contrary to some of our friends, that Joe Biden’s legacy, if he’s going to have credibility, must be much closer to Harry Truman than to Franklin Roosevelt,” Clyburn said. “I hear people talking about Joe Biden all the time comparing him to FDR. FDR’s legacy was not good for Black people.”

“A Fair Deal rather than a New Deal,” he continued, referring to Truman’s “Fair Deal” agenda, which included civil rights protections. “Just because the thing is new doesn’t mean it’s fair. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was not fair to Black people. And I don’t know why people just skip over that, for some reason don’t want to deal with that.”

We know it’s early in the presidency to make grand historical analogies. But the White House and Biden himself have invited this academic exercise. Biden has prominent tributes to both presidents in his Oval Office: a bust of Truman flanking the Resolute Desk and a large portrait of Roosevelt that hangs directly across from the desk. His aides were reportedly trading FDR biographies before inauguration. During the campaign, Biden told Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) he wanted “to be the most progressive President since FDR.”

Most historians who spoke to Transition Playbook said that FDR’s presidency was more consequential than Truman’s given the overlapping crises he confronted. Since Biden is also facing several crises at once, they said that if Biden insisted on modeling his presidency on one of the two — FDR or Truman — they’d go with the former.

Congressman Clyburn’s undeniable truth about FDR’s legacy on racial issues aside, the comparisons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt were wish casting nonsense from the go for a much more immediate reason that somehow escaped wide swaths of the political and commentary discourse despite being as glaringly obvious as the noon day sun against the stark white facade of DC’s government buildings.

Math.

A 50-50 senate, installed by the same American people in the same election that put President Biden in a position to select that FDR portrait for prominent placement in the Oval Office meant there was never going to be any sweeping anything, let alone change. The overreaction of both administrative officials and an eager press ready for the post-Trump era bypassed that obvious fact and instead set the table for sweeping disappointment. Then continued to ignore the mathematical reality all spring, and summer, and fall, and even as winter came and any big legislation not named infrastructure was obviously not going anywhere fast in the split upper chamber of the United States legislative branch. “Sweeping change” was the stuff of a Taylor Swift single, knowing this was all going to end in disappointment but hoping folks would remember all the congress critters and their commentary cheering section standing in their nicest business dress, staring at the sunset, and credited for how gosh darn hard they tried to speak it into existence anyway. But the only rosy cheeks ought to be of embarrassment for overpromising something destined to be under-delivered. FDR at one point had two-third majorities in both houses of congress under Democrat control to steamroll anything and everything short of packing the Supreme Court through. Joe Biden started out his term as president with the split senate and a slim majority in the house.

But don’t worry, we can safely say we will see them again, we always do. Which is how those caterwauling the loudest now about the failure should have seen this coming. Both of President Biden’s predecessors brought congressional majorities to power, had big aspirations, but only had one congressional term with that power, both to what were characterized as “wave elections.” President Obama powered through the Affordable Care Act, along with some Great Recession economic stimulus, but that was legislatively it before the Republicans flipped a whopping 63 house seats to take the House of Representatives, cut the Democratic majority in the Senate down, and grind the Obama administrations legislative agenda to a virtual halt for the next six years. Democrats would lose the senate as well in 2014, and then the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016.

President Trump found himself in the same situation. Despite rolling into office with the “trifecta” of power, legislative movement was glacial. The only big ticket legislation the Trump presidency managed was the tax cut before the Democratic party took the House of Representatives back in 2018 with a 41 seat gain. The only other major moves through congress where COVID-19 related spending, stimulus, and financial relief that got through a very divided and mostly deadlocked congress for the last two years of the Trump presidency.

2020 would see Team Blue not only take the senate and hold the house, but also recapture the White House. But forget FDR and the New Deal era; recent history told anyone paying a lick of attention that President Biden was entering with a majority in congress, but by the slimmest of margins. It took two special elections in Georgia and the extraordinary circumstances of the post-2020 election insanity to get that 50-50 senate: false claims of election fraud, the inexcusable violence of January 6th, and the surreal political theater of the outgoing Republican president suppressing his own party’s vote in a pivotal special election

The parallel news media narratives to “sweeping change” throughout 2021 was also to alternate all blame for that change not sweeping between Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), respectively. Blaming them of course is the easier, more high profile route to go, with the never shy with media Manchin and cross-party fascination with Sinema. Harder to blame the sex scandal and bad grilling video that sunk Democratic senate candidates in winnable races, like Cal Cunningham in North Carolina. Or the much hyped but ultimately failed bid of Sarah Giddeon to unseat moderate Republican Susan Collins in Maine. For every Hickenlooper (CO) or Kelly (AZ) that sent a Republican senator packing, there was an Amy McGrath (KY) or Jamie Harrison (SC) who raised nine figures worth of campaign contributions but failed to get within single digits of Mitch McConnell or Lindsay Graham. The Democratic party, commentators, and news media sympathizers can bemoan the Senators from West Virginia and Arizona, but elections have consequences, and the consequences of the 2020 election was a divided senate.

Just for future reference and planning, if your entire legislative agenda hinged on one United States Senator who you did not get on board before moving to pass it, the problem wasn’t the makeup of the senate as much as it was you creating a strategy that didn’t match reality.

Heralding that the American people wanted Democrat Joe Biden as president must acknowledge that same electorate went with a divided United States Senate and narrow Democratic Party majority for the House of Representatives in the same election at the same time. The “FDR-like” nonsense ignored this obvious fact. The constant excuse making that “sweeping change” was just a hair’s breadth away if just one more think piece would explain to Joe Manchin why he must do exactly what he’s told by everyone not named Joe Manchin. Or, if Krysten Sinema would just forget she is elected from a purple state and should change from one of the senate’s more colorful personalities into an automaton that responds to button pushes from Ron Klain, or Ron Klain’s favorite columnist and frequent quoted retweet, Jennifer Rubin.

The 2021 legislative year was always going to end this way. One, maybe two, major pieces of legislation passed, no sweeping change, no Franklin Delano of Delaware-type “action now” bullet points to launch the Biden era. Now year two of the Biden administration kicks off with slogging out Build Back Better through the complicated and fraught reconciliation process, in an election year no less. The legislative mountain gets steeper, the rock the Democratic Party leaders are pushing gets heavier, and a November date with destiny looms like a cliff that will mute anything not accomplished by then.

“Let us for a moment strip from our simple purpose the confusion that results from a multiplicity of detail and from millions of written and spoken words,” FDR states in his 1935 State of the Union address. If only the Biden Administration, commentators, and everyone else who indulged themselves in the millions of written and spoken words trying to speak into existence a Biden administration that never was going to be had done that to start with.