Is President Biden better compared to Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan?
The Biden administration would very much rather lean into comparisons with the latter than the former, for obvious reasons.
Speaking to Axios, a Biden team insider claims the White House is playing the “long game” which will bear fruit, eventually, and lead to a 1984-style comeback when Ronald Reagan won a 49-state re-election landslide over his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale.
It’s noteworthy that denial is the first stage of grief:
“We are Reagan,” a top confidant of President Biden tells Axios. “We had a big plan. We are getting it in place.”
Why it matters: The White House contends Biden isn’t catching lucky breaks, but playing the long game with his “bottom up, middle out” economic approach.
Biden allies point to a Washington Post-ABC News poll from August 1982, with the headline: “Reagan Should Not Seek Second Term, Majority Believes.” Fifty-eight percent of those polled said he shouldn’t run again.
Reagan’s midterm-summer doldrums echo a poll out last Friday from USA Today and Suffolk University: Two-thirds of voters said they don’t want either Biden or former President Trump to run again.
Just over two years after that Post poll, Reagan won 49 states and got the most electoral votes of any presidential candidate ever.
But, but, but: Biden’s inner circle may think he’s Reagan. But a parade of polls show voters want him to move aside.
After denial comes anger, a stage which Joe Biden himself seems to already be entering as he lashes out at staff for correcting his gaffes and undermining his credibility.
Back to the Reagan comparison, though, is Biden really setting the stage for a 1984 comeback where he proves everyone wrong and turns his sagging approval number in the thirties into a 49-state landslide? Signs would argue otherwise and indicate that despite what the White House says, Biden has been unable to capture the narrative the way Reagan could some 40 years ago.
Another divergence is that of policy. Biden is a “big government” politician whereas Reagan believed in reducing the size and scope of government. Rarely if ever has government the solution to economic woes, it’s usually been the cause of them. Loosening regulations, restrictions, and unleashing American capitalism yield better results time and time again.
Would Biden ever utter any of these words this coherently in a sentence? Listen to Reagan outline his agenda in 1981 compared to Biden’s current malaise of word salads:
For Biden, the government is not the problem, it’s the solution and the only solution working talking about.
More regulation, higher taxes, more subsidies for favored Democratic-Party agenda items, and more interference in the private sector, that’s the Biden philosophy.
If Biden wanted to unleash American might, he wouldn’t have hobbled the energy industry the second he took the Oath of Office by killing pipelines, freezing oil leases, and generally disparaging everything that was good about American energy independence.
If the first two years of Biden’s presidency have proven anything, it’s that his fecklessness is the most common trait he shares with Jimmy Carter. Things happen around him and his answer is to give a weak speech and then do nothing. Crisis after crisis, Biden and Carter stumbled along while the world watched a weakened America.
Biden’s a Carter, not a Reagan, and no amount of “hoping for the best” will change that.
