This article cites “prominent presidential historians” as predicting Biden would be the next FDR and for evidence, linked to an NPR interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Meanwhile, my sense is every practicing historian who is not a professional commentator has said the opposite.
Meanwhile, my sense is every practicing historian who is not a professional commentator has said the opposite.
https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1484514317454163973
Scholarly historians always laugh at the notion of a “presidential historian.” Precisely for the reason that someone who focuses overwhelmingly on the presidency—especially from a biographical perspective—tends to have a very limited stable of analogies & interpretive frameworks.
Second, historians, especially those who study American politics, have always understood that whatever they thought of Biden’s own agency, his presidency would be constrained by razor thin majorities in Congress & a reactionary Supreme Court. And you didn’t need a PhD to see that
Anyway, I don’t think Biden is FDR, or LBJ, or Carter, or whomever. He’s Biden. With a unique set of circumstances to deal with.
And as noted here, the actual politics of the New Deal were not the same as the set piece New Deal of journalistic memory.
https://twitter.com/larryglickman/status/1484508966055038982
Ok I was waaaaay too generous in my earlier appraisal of this argument
https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1484536654664769537
This isn’t even worth critiquing. It’s nonsensical.
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