Biden isn’t FDR

With Biden sliding to 38 per cent approval in the polls, it’s finally time for everyone to stop calling him ‘the new FDR’. That preposterous moniker was always misplaced. Biden’s ambition for ‘transforming’ the country has never extended beyond removing Donald Trump from the White House, inserting his patronage picks into important jobs and, most importantly, crushing the intra-party insurgency led by Senator Bernie Sanders. He has been spectacularly successful in all three of these goals given his meagre talents. But comparing him to Franklin D Roosevelt — America’s most transformative president since Abraham Lincoln, and a man of immense energy — has always been downright absurdity.

Mercifully, the media’s Biden-is-FDR hype has come to a screeching halt over the past two weeks. Unexpected Republican victories in off-year elections — most notably in Virginia’s gubernatorial race — have underlined the weakness of Biden’s relationship with the electorate. But it’s his legislative manoeuvring over two massive bills — the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a $1.85