The legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt looms large in Joe Biden’s White House. Biden invoked the New Deal repeatedly during his presidential campaign and has even hosted talks with historians analyzing the impact of F.D.R.’s reforms. On face, the two resemble each other: both were moderates elected president amidst unprecedented crises succeeding historically unpopular Republicans and eyeing major reforms.
However, Biden seems to be evaluating F.D.R.’s legacy in solely economic terms, focusing little on Roosevelt’s approach to politics. Critics have pointed out that, whereas Roosevelt ‘welcomed the hatred’ of his opposition, supported campaigns against opponents in his own party and threatened to pack the Supreme Court, Biden has preferred compromising with critics. Moderates retort that F.D.R.’s approach was enabled by his congressional supermajorities and the unique crisis he faced, neither of which apply to Biden.
This debate questions whether it is worth engaging in negotiations or if Democrats should instead use parliamentary force against holdouts in their party. However, F.D.R.’s history should not be read as a guide to avoiding bipartisanship: it should instead be read as a different model of bipartisanship all together.
What is bipartisanship?
Bipartisanship remains an undertheorised concept. It describes both an outcome and a process: a bipartisan policy is one with significant cross-party support. In American politics this is often described as emerging from a process of compromise and horse-trading, not dissimilar to non-political negotiations. In both, negotiators representing divergent interests discuss a proposal and engage in deal-making to reach some mutually beneficial compromise. This negotiation-based bipartisanship seems attractive as it ensures that parties who lose still get to represent their voters. However, it is often an insular policy-making method, which shuts voters out.
A negotiator can only represent their clients if they can identify a clear set of demands. This assumption does not carry well into politics. Voter preferences within the same party tend to be highly heterogenous and many voters select their parties on single issues or non-policy concerns like their cultural or historical political ties. Preferences are also liable to change abruptly, as new political concerns arise, or as political insurgents popularise new ideas and shift voting patterns.
As such, it may be difficult for bipartisanship to be concerned with specific demands and instead parties tend to adopt more general positions determined by what their opposition will accept. Opposition can therefore stymy popular legislation without significant electoral costs if their positions on other high-importance issues are popular or if they can shift blame to the government.
Even if a bipartisan effort is successful, there is no guarantee that voters will see it as such. Voters wish to feel like their representatives stand for them and their values and will continue to defend their goals beyond a single legislative push. One can pass a popular bill and still not inspire trust.
Something is therefore missing from this bipartisanship. F.D.R. did not seek to find some unity in the public, but rather sought to produce it. He adopted an ‘agonist’ model of bipartisanship, embracing the conflictual and passionate side of politics to bring voters into policy-making and impose costs on critics for not negotiating or compromising.
Building trust
Such a bipartisanship necessitates trust. Among supporters, strong trust allows politicians to pursue more ambitious policies with a smaller risk of facing electoral consequences. Bold proposals can change the results of negotiations as opposition must negotiate downwards on a greater number of concerns. Trustworthiness changes the perception of opposed voters: they are unlikely to be convinced by rhetoric describing their earnest and passionate opponent as devious or corrupted. Criticisms must be more related to the policies, making it harder to justify opposing popular proposals.
F.D.R. began building trust through direct, unmediated communication. Fireside Chats allowed him to personally talk with millions of voters and explain his motives, circumventing the media. In his third chat, announcing the National Recovery Administration (NRA), Roosevelt methodically illustrates how the policy will work, relates it to campaign promises and responds to criticisms. With this, F.D.R. sought to communicate a program for change, giving voters clear expectations. His first 100 days fostered a vision around skepticism of competition and free markets while advocating for business-government cooperation and government investment, steeped in the vocabulary of Jane Addams and the 19th century Populist party. Finally, trust must be cultivated through results: F.D.R.’s ‘first’ New Deal passed a laundry-list of popular measures, like refinancing home and farm mortgages, creating a national agricultural policy and job-creating infrastructure projects.
The effect of trust can be seen in the NRA’s attempt to standardise labour standards and end child labour. Several corporations were skeptical and challenged these policies in negotiations with the administration. To counter, F.D.R.’s NRA head started the Blue Eagle campaign, campaigning across the country, organizing the then-largest parade in New York and incentivizing two million employers to commit to the new rules. Amidst this support, large industries saw F.D.R. as unswayable and the codes passed.
While Biden may not be able to make use of brand-new radio technology, finding new forms of direct communication continues to be an effective trust-building method. Trump’s use of Twitter is a notable example, but other populist movements have successfully used television programs and public meetups among other strategies to speak directly to voters. Contrastingly, Biden has done the opposite: he relies on traditional presidential modes of communication and was even wary of speaking publicly early in his presidency.
Likewise, for a president with such transformational goals, his vision remains unclear. While ambitious, his policy proposals do not connect to some broader set of principles or model of politics and economics. This leaves a void for commentators to fill: for some he is a malignant ‘socialist’, for others a momentous reformerand still for others, an unremarkable centrist. None of these labels feel accurate, but Biden is yet to counter with a more intuitive alternative.
Finally, while his COVID-19 relief bill was a success, Biden’s support for popular policies has seemed conditional and wavering. If Biden truly supports policies like the minimum wage increase and the PRO Act, he must be willing to campaign for those policies as F.D.R. was. Conservative Democrats have already shown they can be pushed through popular pressure. Against mobilised grassroots support, the typically Republican opposition may seem feebler.
Conflict
Next, agonistic bipartisanship requires leaders to capture and feed off the passions of voters, which can give them great latitude to change the terms of political discussion and force opposition to alter their stances. This is most effective when leaders take ownership of a small set of issues where concern is greatest.
Here is where conflict becomes vital: opponents must be equated with the crisis fueling people’s anger. In his first term, F.D.R. was reluctant to directly call out Republicans and southern Democrats, instead speaking euphemistically, finding his enemy in organised wealth, that ‘resplendent economic autocracy’ of ‘unscrupulous money changers’ whose political supporters were ‘[p]lausible self-seekers and theoretical diehards’. These conflictual comments were accompanied by depictions of the Depression, associating that suffering with his enemies, tarring the business-friendly criticisms and counterproposals of opposition.
Likewise, rejecting norms of political and economic conduct is one of the most salient ways to break with the old order. In the midst of the second New Deal in 1935, F.D.R. faced intense backlash for his proposed dramatic tax increases. This was the stuff of outsider radicals like Huey Long and politicians, businessmen and news outlets staged a major offensive against it. That actually boosted F.D.R., his cast of enemies showing their true colours as the protectors of an outdated, cruel politics. Ultimately, the legislation, along with another bill, was watered down, but it showcased the norms F.D.R. had built: the defeat led to Senate investigations into corporate lobbying and the compromises which passed still gave him much of the discretion he wished for.
In his quest for ‘unity’, Biden has been tame when mentioning his critics. While he has made some attacks, he has generally sought to stand above the partisan fray. He has no Great Depression he can refer to as F.D.R. did, yet, there exist other potential foes that he could discuss. Railing against the corrupting force of organised wealth may have the same force now as it did for Roosevelt. Most Americans abhor the political influence of the wealthy in politics, believe the wealthy are undertaxed and see their social impact, particularly that of tech and pharmaceutical companies, as harmful. Republicans admit they have no popular counter-message against HR-1, a voting rights bill that, among other things, places important restrictions on dark money spending in elections. The F.D.R. approach would couch this policy in moral terms, casting Republican opposition as emblematic of systemic corruption, the hurdle preventing the return of power to the people. Likewise, Biden must be willing to reject outdated norms to signal his conflictual resolve: Senate Parliamentarians and arbitrary executive power limits should be treated like the impediments to justice that Roosevelt built a movement around violating.
Identification
Leaders can use trust and conflict to build new political meanings and identities. The New Deal represented, not just economic reforms, but an ongoing political project representing hope. It was not simply the demolition of the rich that F.D.R. promised: it was the creation of a ‘people’s government’ which broke with the elite-driven status quo. That fostered a form of identification among supporters, where their support for a candidate become synonymous with support for a new status quo. A great example of this were the unions who drastically increased membership by invoking Roosevelt’s name and brandishing the NRA blue eagle. Joining the union meant joining the president’s forces against the shady, malignant businessmen.
Identification had two effects on policymaking: first, it turned the economic preferences of F.D.R.’s supporters into non-negotiable necessities. The New Deal fostered a new common-sense regarding economic policy and national priorities: Roosevelt’s Republican challengers in 1936 and 1940 had to promise to preserve the bulk of it. Secondly, the New Deal shifted the constituencies of American politics. Despite its many racist failures, African-Americans moved in significant numbers to the Democratic Party, breaking their historical ties to the party of Lincoln. Core political cleavages turned more class-oriented and new actors, namely unions and activist groups, gained tremendous influence.
For Biden, agonistic messaging on the issue of work could mobilise new identities. Workplace frustration and strikes have erupted in diverse spaces, in Amazon warehouses, elite universities, classrooms and even investment banks. Biden is clearly supportive of these efforts and has been the most pro-union president in memory. Workers do not represent a salient electoral group in American politics and many of these voters do not have clear political affiliations. To build such a constituency, it is insufficient to describe the PRO Act as prudent public policy: it must be the beginning of a struggle against corrupt wealth. It would be easier to push a moderate like Joe Manchin when the pressure he receives is not restricted to one policy but is a broader demand for him to join in the president’s new movement in all its facets. Such strategies can be electorally risky but taking that risk can open the way for a new form of politics.
Conclusion
F.D.R. should not be viewed as a model agonist. He was far from ideologically consistent and his most ambitious policies were spurred on by activists, unions and socialists who used even more aggressive methods. The identification he fostered was rooted solely in economic issues, making it easy for opponents to build support against him on other issues, particularly foreign policy. However, F.D.R. shows that this model can be used successfully from the office of the president.
Biden’s administration has understood, to some extent, this model’s power. His administration said they wished to be more aggressive than Obama’s was, heavily marketing their COVID-relief bill and occasionally applying light pressure on conservative Democrats. Biden’s first moves have been very popular and have opened to the possibility for building deep trust with voters. He has the space to use F.D.R.’s agonist model.
Democrats historically have felt they must operate within their political status quos, their ambitions halted by political realities, their achievements accompanied by the disclaimer that it was ‘the best they could do’. However, a transformational president is not one who achieves the most within the confines of the existing political environment; it is one who changes those limits.
Alberto Polimeni is a recent masters graduate in Comparative Politics from LSE.
Image credit: “61-403” by FDR Presidential Library & Museum is licensed under CC BY 2.0