Are Joe Biden’s Problems Greater Than Franklin Roosevelt’s?

In Monday’s Financial Times, Rana Foroohar, in defending Joe Biden’s tightening of “Buy American” rules for federal government purchasing, said “the political challenges facing the Biden administration … are arguably greater than Franklin Roosevelt faced in the 1930s.”¹

While I understand President Biden faces challenges, to compare today’s problems with the 1930s is to not appreciate the situation then.  The unemployment rate in 1933 was 24.9%.  With no nationwide unemployment insurance system, no job meant no money.  When thousands of banks failed in 1933, people’s money was gone because there was no national deposit insurance scheme.  While these might be called economic problems (as opposed to political problems), if they were not dealt with to at least some extent, they would have resulted in real political problems.

As for racial injustice, which Ms. Foroohar mentions, in the 1930s, Jim Crow laws, pre-Brown segregated schools, and more gave us a systematic racism beyond anything we have today, which, unfortunately, Franklin Roosevelt did not do anything about.

President Biden has many problems to deal with today, but claiming they are worse than those in the past is inaccurate and does not make them easier to solve.
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¹ Rana Foroohar, “‘Buy American’ is not bad, it is necessary,” Financial Times, February 1, 2021.