MSome of you may still remember the nickname that the (in this respect very creative) 45th President invented for Joe Biden: “Sleepy Joe”, Donald Trump called him, the sleepy Josef. Even his followers actually expected nothing more from Biden than a return to normalcy, to the status quo ante. A middle-class candidate who should reverse Trump’s policy. Back on the go.
who Bidens Politik who followed the first two weeks in office knows: That was a fallacy. Its aim is far-reaching reforms that go far beyond the expected compromise policy. The spirit of the former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hovers over his actions, whose policies in the 1930s ushered in a radical change in American economic, social and political history. What Biden is now trying to do – with the pandemic in the background – is nothing less than a New Deal for the 21st century.
Biden’s inaugural speech already made people sit up and take notice: He spoke of a 400-year-old “cry for justice between the races” that finally had to be heard, about the fight against “domestic terror”, the fight against lies, and the renewal of American democracy. Then there was the not-so-subtle signal that Biden had a large Roosevelt portrait hung in the Oval Office of the White House.