The Last New Deal Democrat
On President Biden's State of the Union Address
As this is an election year in America, 2024’s State of the Union address will likely be President Joe Biden’s last. If he is voted out of office this year, then he will be the last in the long line of New Dealers who have defined the politics of the Democratic Party for the last century. Acknowledging his political heritage, he opens by invoking President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man most responsible in instituting the New Deal:
In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation. And he said, “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union”. Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe. President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time. Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.
Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it’s we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.
The homage to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is all too clear - 1941 is eighty-years away from the present. However, his direct invocation of Lincoln in the next few lines struck a false note, as it invites division rather than unification: “Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today.” This division in American political life is crudely reminded by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R - GA), who heckled the President over the name of a woman tragically killed by an illegal migrant.
Addressing this deep political division, Biden continues to remind members of Congress that Republicans and Democrats remain undivided over the role government should play in American life, a staple of New Deal politics:
Thanks to our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 46,000 new projects have been announced across your communities – modernizing our roads and bridges, ports and airports, and public transit systems.
Removing poisonous lead pipes so every child can drink clean water without risk of getting brain damage.
Providing affordable high speed internet for every American no matter where you live.
In his 1941 State of the Union Address, President Roosevelt articulated the Four Freedoms essential to decent living: freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. As an American citizen, Representative Greene’s act is protected under the first freedom, inappropriate though it may be. Speaking as only the second Catholic to hold the office of President, Biden understands how important the second freedom is to American religious life. As the heir to a country struck with the pandemic and economic recession, Biden’s New Deal-style government initiatives are aimed that providing freedom from want to all Americans, red or blue. Finally, as international peace is subject to another series of attacks, and domestic peace stands at a balance, Biden seeks to protect freedom from fear against the various threats from overseas: “Europe at risk. The free world at risk, emboldening others who wish to do us harm… We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.”
President Biden’s party is undergoing a seismic change. As the New Deal Democrats age, retire and pass away, the party is now populated by neoliberals (of the Clinton and Obama variety) and progressives (such as Vice President Kamala Harris and the members of the Squad). Although the New Deal era is not free of legitimate criticism, it is arguably the most successful era of the Democratic Party. Aside from the New Deal and Great Society programs, which have cemented themselves as permanent fixtures of American government, this era also oversaw America’s elevation from great power to superpower. President Biden owes much of his defiant rhetoric in the Address to his Democratic predecessors, whose leadership rendered isolationism a fringe ideology.
The New Deal era also gave America some of its greatest Democratic Presidents (Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson) as well as some of its greatest Senators (Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, and Joseph Lieberman). While conservatives continue to deride the New Deal era, many of the movement’s most significant era were once New Deal Democrats (Ben Wattenberg, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and even Ronald Reagan). Biden may not have been the greatest or the most consequential representative of this era, but owing to his seniority, he now stands as one of the few remaining New Dealers.
To me, this is what makes this year’s State of the Union address all the more significant. Because of Trump, the Republican party has changed from the vehicle of the conservative movement to one that channels populist anger and disdain for the ‘elites’, even among its own ranks. The Democratic Party, with its increasingly vocal progressive wing, is beginning to do the same. Towards the end of President Biden’s address, he address the growing concerns over his advanced age:
In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old. Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures… The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.
Coming from Republican opponents, concerns over the President’s age ring hollow, as Biden’s predecessor and presumed GOP nominee for the White House had been America’s oldest serving Head of State between 2017 and 2021. But perhaps their repeated calls for Biden to be put in a retirement home only mask their true grievances. To the Republican voters, Biden simultaneously represents an outdated consensus and a radical departure from traditional American values. But despite their rhetoric of conserving American tradition and the Founding, some so-called conservatives were willing to discard all that just to see their preferred candidate win the White House. Against the shared disdain of his Republican opponents and the more radical wing of his own party, it is Joe Biden to appears to be the more conservative figure running for President. And I, for one, prophesize an uglier American political landscape once he is gone.