Now that Joe Biden has signed the most ambitious anti-poverty law since the Great Society, the analogies with Lyndon Johnson are coming fast. Two senate insiders turned running mates to younger, more charismatic, presidents. Two barnacled centrists who unexpectedly built, or rebuilt, the American welfare state.
Biden is "probably not" going to get us into another Vietnam. Sheesh.
As someone who sweated the draft lottery, I find this a very weak analogy. I get that Biden's national security team leans more hawkish than most in the Democratic party would prefer (and maybe even me), but this is a case where analogizing him to LBJ obscures far more than it illuminates.
The more interesting question is how similar his policy will be to Obama's.
Were Biden "our LBJ" Peter, then Biden would have ordered Kamala to overrule the parliamentarian, fire the parliamentarian, hire a new parliamentarian, and in between all that put the $15 minimum wage, Green New Deal and Medicare for All in the bill PLUS -- persuade -- or bully -- people like Manchin, Sinema, King, Collins, Romney and Tester et al to "git on board, or ELSE" in Git Right With GAWD face to facers that resulted in a 51 vote majority PLUS get RID of the goddamn LAZY FILIBUSTER. LBJ delivered. Biden has not. Don't git yer hopes up and stop pissing on our legs and calling it rainwater..
Biden is rapidly racking up promises he can’t keep on the domestic side. IRS is incapable of fulfilling the promise to send out cash — comments everywhere are full of people owed thousands from unprocessed 2019 and 2020 returns, also unable to get their stimulus checks — and producing vax means little if dozens of red-state governments stymie distribution. The word “sclerotic” comes to mind. As for foreign — when have we had a post-cold-war foreign policy? Biden’s no dove, and his impulses were formed long ago; the public is not on the side of a nonexistent 21st-c foreign policy. The public, not just the progressive left, is on the side of anti-plute legislation after four decades of arrant greed and social destruction.
Biden is "probably not" going to get us into another Vietnam. Sheesh.
As someone who sweated the draft lottery, I find this a very weak analogy. I get that Biden's national security team leans more hawkish than most in the Democratic party would prefer (and maybe even me), but this is a case where analogizing him to LBJ obscures far more than it illuminates.
The more interesting question is how similar his policy will be to Obama's.
And Biden was the Dove in the Obama administration. I find the comparison tenuous; Iraq/Afghanistan is not Vietnam.
"In today’s Democratic Party, figures like Geithner have become virtual pariahs."
What? Are you serious?
But yer raight about foreign policy and wars and Israel...
Were Biden "our LBJ" Peter, then Biden would have ordered Kamala to overrule the parliamentarian, fire the parliamentarian, hire a new parliamentarian, and in between all that put the $15 minimum wage, Green New Deal and Medicare for All in the bill PLUS -- persuade -- or bully -- people like Manchin, Sinema, King, Collins, Romney and Tester et al to "git on board, or ELSE" in Git Right With GAWD face to facers that resulted in a 51 vote majority PLUS get RID of the goddamn LAZY FILIBUSTER. LBJ delivered. Biden has not. Don't git yer hopes up and stop pissing on our legs and calling it rainwater..
Great article, but Tim Geithner, Obama’s Treasury Secretary, did not have a background on Wall Street.
Biden is rapidly racking up promises he can’t keep on the domestic side. IRS is incapable of fulfilling the promise to send out cash — comments everywhere are full of people owed thousands from unprocessed 2019 and 2020 returns, also unable to get their stimulus checks — and producing vax means little if dozens of red-state governments stymie distribution. The word “sclerotic” comes to mind. As for foreign — when have we had a post-cold-war foreign policy? Biden’s no dove, and his impulses were formed long ago; the public is not on the side of a nonexistent 21st-c foreign policy. The public, not just the progressive left, is on the side of anti-plute legislation after four decades of arrant greed and social destruction.